


Breathe Their Words In Pain

by orphan_account



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Brain Damage, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Injury Recovery, M/M, New Earth, New New York (Doctor Who)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:42:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23150392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Jack Harkness, Ianto Jones, and how they deal with life when everything changes.Reposted due to accidental deletion of original.
Relationships: Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones
Comments: 2
Kudos: 67





	Breathe Their Words In Pain

**Author's Note:**

> I was deleting my account like I usually do to start over in a new fandom but I accidentally clicked the wrong thing and deleted all of my works. This is sad because now there are none of your nice comments and kudos and bookmarks. I apologize and hope putting the entire series together in one can make up for it.

_Where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain,_  
_For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain._  
Richard II  
Act II, Scene I

* * *

* * *

“Hey, Jack. Sorry, weevils are being pesty. I know I said I’d meet you at eight, but I don’t think I’ll make it back by then. I dropped Gwen off at home, but I got another call about an ‘ugly ass bastard’ in Bute Park, so I’m going to go check it out. Don’t worry, I’ve got enough spray. And enough handcuffs. Speaking of, there’s this thing we could try out later. No, I’m not saying more than that. I’ve already said enough in this message. Um. Don’t wait up, I guess. I’ll grab some curry or something and we can eat at my place. I know that isn’t what you wanted to do, but I doubt I’ll look nice enough for a real date after this. I’ll probably have mud everywhere. Oh. Shouldn’t have said that, now you’re probably thinking of things to... Sorry, this is getting wordy. I’ll shut up now. Just... weevil first, then curry at my place, and then... oh shit! Fuck!”

* * *

Jack Harkness sits on the bench, reading The Murder on the Orient Express. He is not sure how he feels about it. He likes Agatha Christie and her novels, but this one is having a tough time capturing his attention. He figures it is not exactly Christie’s fault, nor the book’s. It is simply that his mind is elsewhere. 

He shakes his head and tries to read the same page he has been stuck on for nearly fifteen minutes. He has not moved past that page since he first opened the book when they came outside. As his mind sticks on a letter A and refuses to move forward, he realizes that he probably will not get past that page, no matter how hard he tries. 

With a sigh, he closes the book and looks over his shoulder. Ianto sits there and stares. That is all he does anymore, sit there and stare, except for when he is in bed, and then he lays there and stares. Both the nurses, doctors and Owen all agree that is all Ianto is ever going to do. They think he is going to be a staring shell for the rest of his life. Jack is not sure whether to believe them or not. Maybe they are right. Maybe they are wrong. Brain injuries are hard to understand. However, it has been two months since the accident, and all Ianto has done is stare.

Ianto has two states, Jack has determined: eyes open and eyes closed. Since he is in his eyes open state right now, the nurses thought it would be a good idea for him to get some fresh air. So, they put him in one of those tilted wheelchairs and allowed Jack to wheel him outside to a shaded bench. A small part of Jack wonders why they bother. Ianto does not seem to be aware of the difference. But a bigger, more important part, the part that is taking Ianto home in a few weeks, thinks this is good for Ianto. Tipped back to stare up at large, leafy greens is better than laying back and staring at the bland, tiled ceiling some more. 

Jack spots some drool and reaches over to wipe it away. Ianto’s bottom lip spasms. That happens sometimes. Jack likes to think it is proof of Ianto’s own movements but the nurses, doctors and Owen do not agree. They think the lip twitches are accidental reflexes. Jack never bothers to point out that Ianto does appear not have enough reflexes for even accidental ones in the first place. They know better than he does, so he keeps his mouth shut and believes what he wants to himself.

He brushes a thumb gently over the lip, but it does not twitch again. He tries not to feel disappointed. 

Sometimes, Jack wants to get his hands on the person who did this and make their life miserable. The problem is, their life is over and Jack cannot strangle a corpse. It was all so stupid and pointless. Ianto had a life of danger in Torchwood, and time and time again he had survived it, only to get hit by an addict who decided an instant fix was more important than the lives of others on the road.

Jack sighs again ad gently brushes Ianto’s hair from his forehead. He frowns when he sees Ianto blink twice. He tries to remember if he has seen that before, and he does not think he has. Ianto always blinks one slow blink, then resumes his staring. That part has not changed, because Ianto is still staring blankly at nothing, but Jack does not know what to think of the two quick blinks. In the end, he brushes it aside. The nurses, doctors and Owen have all made it very clear to him that he makes mountains out of molehills when it comes to seemingly normal things for unresponsive patients. 

He returns to the book in his hand. He wants to read it, he really does, but he cannot take his mind off of Ianto. There are still so many things to worry about. He has requisitioned Torchwood’s only accessible safehouse, but he has not found someone to be a live in carer when they move into it. Jack plans to stay with Ianto, but there will be times that Jack will need help with this. He does not have the skill to do this on his own, but with the help, he will be able to care for Ianto. He will. He wants to be with Ianto, no matter what, even if it means quitting his job. Torchwood can wait another fifty to seventy years. Ianto cannot. 

An idea strikes him. If he can only think about Ianto, but he wants to read, maybe he should read to Ianto.

“Would you like me to read to you?” Jack asks him.

Ianto does not respond, as is expected, but Jack notices another lip spasm. 

“Okay,” Jack says. “But you have to promise not to laugh when I mess up the accents.”

Ianto continues staring up at the tree.

“‘On this, the second day of the journey,’” Jack begins, “‘barriers were breaking down...’”

It feels a lot better to read out loud to Ianto, because Jack can both read and consider Ianto. Sometimes he looks up to see if Ianto is reacting at all to Jack’s horrible accents, or to the plot, or anything else. Ianto is not. He does some more double blinks, lip spasms, even a little more drooling. At least he is having an active day, Jack thinks as he wipes away more spit.

“‘It may be foolish, but I feel as if anything might happen,’” Jack reads, “‘anything at all...’”

Then he stops dead in his tracks. 

Ianto is not staring up at the tree anymore. He is looking around chaotically, as if he cannot focus on anything, which is shocking because one- his eyes never focused on anything and they never tried to, and two- this has never happened before.

Jack freezes in place as Ianto’s eyes stop on his. They stare at each other. Actually, not staring. Looking. They are looking at one another.

Ianto’s lip twitches. No, that is wrong too. It is both lips, and they aren’t twitching. They are moving. Ianto’s lips are moving.

Jack is so stunned for a moment that he cannot move, he cannot breathe. Then Ianto’s eyes roam once more, looking fearful and distressed, and when they return to Jack’s again, they look terrified.

“Ianto?” Jack asks.

If Ianto has any comprehension, it is hidden behind the terror, but Jack feels that the terror itself is confirmation enough.

“Hold on,” Jack tells him, his voice cracking slightly from excitement, concern, and shock.

He fumbles for his phone, which is absolutely wonderful because this is the exact moment he needs his suave coordination and it fails. When his fingers curl around it in his pockets, he dials the first number on speed dial.

“Owen,” he says the instant the other end picks up.

“What, Jack?” Owen grumps on the other end. “I’m kind of in the middle of wrestling a weevil, so if you wouldn’t mind calling me back…”

“Owen, it’s Ianto.”

Owen is instantly alert. “What’s wrong? He stop breathing again?”

Jack shudders. That only happened once, back in the beginning, but it was enough to give him nightmares. He shakes his head, clearing the thoughts. It is not the time to be thinking about that. 

“No, no, no, he’s awake!”

The alertness fades as Owen sighs. “Jack, we’ve been through this. Just because he moves…”

“Owen,” Jack cuts in. “He’s looking at me and he looks terrified. He’s awake.”

There are many colorful profanities that suddenly blast out of the speaker of the phone. Jack is not entirely certain if Owen is worried, excited, or astonished. It is possible that, like with Jack, it is all three. 

“Fucking call the nurses, Jack,” Owen says when he can say things that are not curses. “Call somebody! Don’t just sit there!”

Jack does while Ianto’s frightened eyes watch him the entire time, his lips moving to form things that Jack does not understand.

* * *

Ianto lets out something that sounds like a mixture between an agitated groan and pained sigh.

Jack looks up from the puzzle they are working on.

“Words, Ianto,” Jack reminds him.

Ianto glares at him. Jack feels a little bad, but the therapist had told Jack that Ianto needs to work on this, and Ianto does not listen to the therapist. Also, Jack does not know what the problem is unless Ianto tells him. As hard as it may be, Ianto needs to say what is wrong, or Jack will never be able to help.

Ianto seems to recognize that this time, so he frowns and tries to say what he needs. For a moment, his mouth works on the word before the sounds come out.

“...n-nnn..." Ianto cuts himself of and frowns. “...hhhhha..."

That time his voice seems to cut out without his permission, and his face scrunches up in frustration. Jack, who has now worked out the problem, gives him a break. Normally, he would not, because Ianto both gets frustrated when he cannot work out the word by himself and because he needs to learn to do it on his own, but right now, there are other issues.

“Hands cramping up?” Jack asks.

Ianto closes his eyes and nods.

Jack sets down the puzzle piece in his hand and scoots his chair closer to Ianto. He turns Ianto’s wheelchair around too, so that he has access to both hands and does not have to awkwardly reach across Ianto to grab the right one, which seems to be in more need of attention. The left one has not been doing much work on the puzzle, so there is less urgency to work on that one than the other. Jack takes Ianto’s right hand in his and begins to massage it. Because he can, he throws in a little of the physiotherapy that Ianto should be working on, manipulating the fingers and bending the wrist. Ianto seems to notice and scowls at him, but he does not comment, because he knows this is good for him and because he just cannot say the words.

It has taken Jack this entire time at rehab to forgive the nurses, doctors and Owen for giving up on Ianto, but he has indeed forgiven them. Every brain injury looks different, they said, and it was not their fault for not realizing that Ianto was just being slow to come back to awareness. Owen called Ianto a stubborn, lazy git, which heartened Jack as much as it pissed him off. As long as Owen is calling Ianto names like he used to before the accident, it means Ianto is really back, even if there are certain limitations. 

They are working on physiotherapy, because some things got fucked up in the accident, and also on speech. He has one of those medical sounding A-words that Jack doesn’t understand. Anomia? Aphasia? Apraxia? Jack cannot remember what they called it. Ianto has a hard time with words, the nurses, doctors and Owen explain to Jack. He knows the right words and what he means to say, he just cannot articulate them. He says the wrong thing when he tries to say the right one, or manages only incomplete sounds, or cannot get the word out at all.

Right now, the physical side of things is going a lot better than the verbal. Ianto is getting motor control back at a good pace, but Jack has only heard Ianto say one complete word. It was “Jack,” and Jack did not even realize it at the time, because it was so slurred. 

Jack switches to Ianto’s left hand when he feels the right has become pliable enough. He presses his hands gently around the hand for a moment, but he lets go when Ianto gives him an odd look. He throws a sheepish one back Ianto’s way, then picks the hand back up. This one does not seem as stiff as the other, which is probably because Ianto has not been using it. Ianto was ambidextrous beforehand. Now he is finding a hard time using it. The left side of Ianto’s body had been the side with the most damage. 

He works his fingers around Ianto’s after he finishes, then looks up at Ianto. Jack can practically hear him telling Jack to leave him, to save himself from this, even without needing to actually hear him say it. It is written all over Ianto’s face. The sadness, the frustration, the anger, the depression. 

“Hey, hey,” Jack says. “It’s okay. I know it’s hard. I know you can do it.”

Ianto does not look convinced.

“And I won’t leave,” Jack adds. Ianto scowls. “I don’t care what you think, I’m not leaving you, so don’t even try telling me to go.”

Ianto’s face goes blank. Jack knows that was a few words too many in on sentence. Comprehension is sometimes hard for Ianto with bigger sentences. Jack sighs and holds Ianto’s hand tighter.

“I want to stay,” Jack says. “I want to. Really.”

Ianto scowls again.

“Not everything is about you,” Jack says, though his tone is teasing. “This is about what I want. So put up and shut up.” 

After puzzling out the words to that for a moment, Ianto rolls his eyes. Jack smiles up at him.

“I’m staying,” Jack whispers to him, leaning forward to kiss Ianto’s forehead. “I’m staying.”

* * *

Jack does not like to sit through Ianto’s speech therapy. He can sit through physical therapy just fine, because Ianto is doing brilliantly at that. As brilliantly as he can anyway, with a leg and arm that do not want to function the way Ianto seems to expect them to. In speech therapy, though, Ianto is so easily frustrated and pissed off that it breaks Jack’s heart. He avoids them as much as he can.

He cannot always escape them though, so he sits in the background as Ianto tries and mostly fails to say normal words. Sometimes, Ianto cannot even form the word with his mouth. Other times, he says the wrong word. He has never pieced together more than two words. They were “fuck you” and there was so much space in between that Jack seriously doubted that it could even be considered in the same sentence, but the therapist cooed and praised Ianto, despite the fact that Ianto just cussed her out. 

“So I see you don’t approve of Dr. Williams,” Jack says later that day.

Jack rephrases when Ianto does not understand, and Ianto shakes his head in exasperation. 

“You didn’t have to be rude,” Jack says.

Ianto shakes his head again. 

“N-n-need,” he struggles out. Then he grimaces. That is apparently not the word he wants. Jack waits as he tries again. Whatever word he wants, it does not come out.

Jack sorts it out himself. “He needs to be rude” does not sound right. “She needs to hear it” might be it, but needs is evidently not the right word.

“She deserved it?” Jack guesses, even though he is not supposed to.

Ianto glares at him, but it is that glare that states how angry he is that Jack can say what he means but he cannot, and not the glare that means Jack is wrong.

“Yeah,” Ianto says after a moment. His face contorts into the right one to make the D sound for “deserve”, but nothing comes out. He closes his eyes, puts the heel of his hand to his temple and presses hard.

“Hey, hey,” Jack says, easing the hand away. “None of that.”

“Fuck,” Ianto says angrily as he opens his eyes again. “Fuck!”

“I know,” Jack says. “I know.”

* * *

Jack has given up the accessible house he originally had, deciding someone else will need it far more. Ianto is not walking full time, not yet, but only because his physiotherapist suggests to ease into it. Therefore, Jack buys a house that does not have all the accessibility features, one that is in a peaceful area in Cardiff, where Jack can sneak away to the hub on occasion. Ianto will not need his continued help eventually. Ianto will be able to function just fine on his own, so long as what he is doing requires no speaking, reading, or writing. 

The first time Jack wheels him into the house in the crappy, borrowed hospital wheelchair, Ianto takes one look and runs a hand through his hair as he searches for a word.

“Black,” he says. Jack does not need to see his face to know that is not the right word. “Ah... nnn... night.”

Jack does not startle or jump when Ianto’s fist slams down hard on the armrest of the chair. He knows what to expect by now.

“I’ll turn on some lights,” Jack says, knowing what Ianto means.

Ianto shakes his head to himself as Jack finds the lightswitches. 

“Let there be light,” Jack says as he turns them on with a flourish.

Jack can see the slight smile on Ianto’s face even as he pretends to be annoyed.

“Drama,” Ianto tells him. 

“What, me?” Jack asks playfully. “Dramatic?”

“Yyyou,” Ianto confirms. “You.”

Jack laughs and Ianto takes the opportunity to glance around the part of the house he can see from the front hallway.

“Gwen helped us move in,” Jack says as he pushes Ianto to the kitchen. It is nearing dinner time. 

“Er...” Ianto says before his mouth works on a word. 

Jack knows it is supposed to be “thanks” to alert Jack to thank Gwen for him, because that is just how Ianto is, but he does not say anything. He waits for Ianto to find the word himself. Ianto does not have the patience that Jack has, and he gives up after only a few moments. 

“What do you want to eat?” Jack asks.

Wrong choice of question, he soon learns.

“Duck,” Ianto says. It comes out too quickly for that to be the right answer. “...g-g-goose.”

Chicken, Jack guesses, but Ianto does not like chicken very much, so he holds off for Ianto to finish like he is supposed to.

“Geese,” Ianto tries again.

Ianto leans forward and puts his face in his hands. Jack waits for him to compose himself and try again, but that does not happen. Hewatches in sorrow as Ianto’s shoulders begin to shake as he breaks down right in front of Jack’s eyes.

The only other time this happened was when the speech therapist was trying to figure out his reading and writing comprehension. She wrote a name on the board. Ianto could not read it. She spelled it letter by letter out loud. Ianto could not understand. She had him repeat after her. He got as far as the C, then broke down when all he could say instead was a slurred “sshhhhhhhhhhhhe.” Jack had just wished Dr. Williams had picked a name that was not his. 

“Hey, hey,” Jack says now, kneeling in front of Ianto. He says that a lot now. Hey, hey. He hopes it is as soothing as it feels. “It’s okay.”

Ianto’s face is one of absolute fury, complete with red and puffy eyes and a snarl on his lips. 

“N-n-nnno,” he spits. “No!”

As hard as it is, as much as he wants to run away and hide from that look of utter contempt, Jack holds his ground. He puts a hand on Ianto’s back, one on his neck, and gathers Ianto close as Ianto silently sobs into him. 

When Ianto calms down, he looks tired and empty inside. Jack kisses his hair. His hair does not smell right. It smells like the hospital. Tonight will be the first night it smells like Ianto again, after he showers with his own shampoo and bodywash. Jack remembers the bed baths that they gave him. They have come a long, long way since then, even if Ianto seems bent on beating himself up for his missing words. 

Jack stands up when his knees start to hurt after kneeling on the floor too long. 

“Curry,” Ianto says quietly.

“You want curry?” Jack does not understand how curry equals ducks and geese.

Ianto nods wearily.

“Curry it is,” Jack says. 

Ianto puts his face back in his hands. Jack watches the rise and fall of his torso as he takes deep breaths in and out. 

* * *

Nobody visited, before. Only Owen, who was a doctor, Ianto’s doctor, and demanded to know everything about how Ianto was doing. Gwen and Tosh came once or twice when Ianto was in the coma, but as soon as they thought he was surely never coming back to them, they did not come back again. It was too hard on them, Jack assumes. Now, though, there is no reason to not visit except for being afraid of Ianto.

Tosh is the first visitor in the new house. She admitted to Jack on the phone beforehand that she was a little nervous, that she did not know what to do or say. Jack told her the basics, but mostly just to be patient and understanding. 

“Hi,” she says when Jack opens the door. She is carrying a bag that is not her purse. 

“Hi,” Jack says. “Come on in.”

“Thanks,” she says as she steps inside.

Ianto stands in the living room waiting for her. His hands are nervously fidgeting with his clothes. Jack noticed he did that a lot when he wore ties and waistcoats. Now he is just tugging at a plain white t-shirt, though his hands creep up to his neck to fix an imaginary tie. He drops his hands to his side as soon as Tosh enters the room after Jack.

“Hi, Ianto,” she says.

Ianto takes a very brief second to work out the words before he says them. Jack caught him practicing in the mirror this morning.

“Hi... T…” He stops. He takes a breath and tries again. “To...sh. Hi, To-sh.” 

Tosh grins and Ianto looks very relieved and pleased. 

Tosh manages to make Ianto the happiest he has been since before the accident. Jack is so grateful to her. She talks a lot about the things happening in Torchwood, does not make Ianto say much, always ends conversations on a joke. Jack can tell Ianto misses most of them, but Ianto still looks happy to be in her presence. 

“Here,” Tosh says eventually. “I brought you something.”

Ianto and Jack watch as Tosh reaches for the bag she brought. She roots around in there for a moment, then pulls out something thick and plastic. Jack notes it as one of those Playaway audiobooks, none other than Mysterious Affair at Styles by one Agatha Christie. Jack smiles. Owen must have spread the word about dear Agatha’s reviving capabilities.

Tosh passes it to Ianto, who looks down at it.

“No,” he says sadly, and Jack knows that he means “I can’t read what this says.”

Tosh does not know what Ianto means, though. She looks hurt.

“No?” she asks tentatively.

“No!” he repeats, his eyes widening. 

Jack is pretty sure he is trying to dismiss Tosh’s “no” and assuage her fears, but Tosh still does not understand until Jack tells her. Ianto runs an agitated hand through his hair as Tosh looks at him when understanding dawns. 

“Oh,” Tosh says. She smiles faintly. “Sorry, I know you can’t read the title. It’s Agatha Christie.”

“Ah,” Ianto says, nodding. 

“I hoped it would help with your comprehension,” she says. 

“Yes,” Ianto says. “Good. Um, er... yes, good.”

He leans over and hugs her as a “thank you.” Tosh grins.

* * *

At his first physiotherapy appointment after they move into the house, Ianto is cleared for walking full time. They think the brace on his left leg will be enough to hold his weight. Jack supposes they are right, but Ianto limps quite heavily even with it on. Ianto’s left leg is still very sore and painful to him, his left hand and arm too. Ianto’s left hand is the thing most in need of therapy, but the therapists spend most time on the leg because he needs to walk on it. Today the therapists send him home with hope that his left leg should improve, but say nothing about the hand. That is okay, because Jack can take care of the hand himself with Owen’s help, he decides as he returns the foldable wheelchair they borrowed to the hospital.

On the drive home, Ianto seems nervous. He always seems nervous in cars now. Sometimes he flinches when cars change lanes.

“Hey, hey,” Jack says after Ianto nearly collides into him as a car turns into the lane behind them. 

“Don’t…” Ianto says as he sits up. “Not... ssssssssssssss...”

He cuts himself off with an inhale. He scrunches his face up tight for a moment, then relaxes with the exhale. Ianto has the most trouble with S, Sh and Z. Sibilants are hard.

“Sssay,” Ianto finishes when he attempts it again. “Nnnot... say.”

“Sorry,” Jack apologizes. 

“Like... p-pig. Um... uh, horse.”

“I wasn’t shushing you like an animal,” Jack says. “I’m just...”

He shrugs, unsure how to finish his sentence.

“Ha,” Ianto says triumphantly. “No... no... words, you.”

Jack laughs. “Yeah, I guess not.”

He leans over to kiss Ianto and Ianto bodily shoves him back.

“No!” he snaps. “No! ...Yyyou... you, you! Eyes!”

He points at the road angrily. Jack obeys immediately.

“Sorry,” Jack says again.

He diligently watches the road the rest of the way back. Ianto keeps his fist balled up tight, but Jack does not even dare take one of his hands off the wheel to hold one of Ianto’s for comfort. He does not want to make Ianto freak out again.

* * *

They sleep in the same bed as if that is normal for them. It is now, Jack supposes. There were a lot of nights when Ianto was in rehab that Jack stole back into his room and slipped into bed beside him. Jack thinks the nurses never even bothered to stop him.

Tonight, Ianto very clearly wants sex. This is something Jack has been trying to skirt around, not because he does not want it, because he definitely does, but because is not sure how ready for this Ianto is. He cannot call Owen to ask, because Owen would cuss him out, tell them never to have sex or mention it to him again, and then hang up without answering the question. And Jack is not about to ask the hospital about this, no way.

“I could hurt you,” Jack tells Ianto. “You still get tired. A lot.”

“You... not www...” Ianto curls his fists up. “Not... not want.”

“Of course I want you!” Jack exclaims. “Why would I not?”

Ianto closes his eyes for a second, working out what Jack just said. Then his eyes open again and Jack does not have the words to describe how sad they make him.

“Me, I... you,” he says. “You, care. I, me... I sleep… was sleep, you... watch… me ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss... ah! Fuck!” 

He throws his hands up in the air out of sheer frustration. Jack cannot understand any of what he said. Ianto tends to lose some coherency when upset, and he is very, very upset now.

“Yyyyou!” Ianto shouts. “You watch! I... sleep!”

Jack has to admit, he does watch Ianto when he sleeps, but he does not think that is what the problem is. Ianto, increasing in frustration, lets out an indecipherable yell of anger. He sits down on the bed and puts his face in a hand.

“Oh,” Jack says when it finally sinks in. 

Ianto lifts his head from his hand. “Oh?”

“Ianto...” Jack sighs. “You were in a coma. Then you woke up, but you weren’t awake. Is that what you mean?”

Ianto takes this in for a moment, then nods.

“Yes,” he says. “And... and you... watch. Care.”

“Yeah,” Jack says. “Yeah. I was going to take you home and take care of you. Look after you, because you needed help.”

“B-bad.” 

“No,” Jack says. “It isn’t a bad thing to need help.”

“Not want!” Ianto exclaims. “Watch and... care, not... not want!”

“I don’t not want you!” Jack cries.

Ianto balks at the double negative.

“I want you,” Jack rephrases. “I want you! Even if I once constantly had to wipe the spit off your chin. I. Still. Want. You.”

Ianto and Jack glare at each other for a good long while. Then Ianto looks away.

“Fuck,” Ianto mutters. 

Jack feels the curse is very appropriate in this situation. He watches Ianto for a second, looks at the way those beautiful blue eyes search the room as if it could give him the words he needs, watches as Ianto thinks to himself in coherent words that Jack can remember him having. Witty remarks and a no nonsense attitude, and everything that Jack loves about him. He has it. It is all still there, right in those eyes. The resolve within Jack crumbles.

“Yeah,” he says. “Okay.”

Ianto turns back to him with a confused look.

“Okay?” he asks.

“Okay,” Jack says.

He takes a few steps closer to Ianto, taking Ianto’s good right hand and holding it to his lips. He kisses it at the very center of the palm, then begins to spread kisses up each finger. 

“Okay,” he repeats as he rests the hand under his chin. 

Ianto needs no further encouragement. He crashes his lips into Jack’s, and it is still that hot, heavy rush that Jack remembers from their first night together, and every other fuck since then.

Jack pulls his lips from Ianto’s for a moment, and Ianto pouts like he always does when Jack does this.

“If I tire you out,” Jack says, “you have to tell me.”

Ianto looks at him, then laughs.

“H-how?” Ianto asks. “Can’t... make words.” 

“Then I reserve the right to stop when I think you need to.” 

Ianto pouts again.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Jack says. “You just got out of hospital!”

“Mmmonth,” Ianto says, rolling his eyes. Then shakes his head. “Week.”

Ianto heaves a frustrated sigh at his own error, then cuts himself off by throwing himself back at Jack.

* * *

Ianto’s body is long and lean. There used to be a little pudge around the middle, which is exactly what Jack likes, but it has gone now. Between being fed through a tube and eating shitty hospital food, he has lost a lot of weight. Jack, at the risk of sounding like someone’s grandmother, wants to plump him up. Just a little, at least enough to make him look less skeletal.

“No,” Ianto says when Jack tries to feed him more chocolate covered berries as they lay naked bed. “Ennnn...”

He squeezes his eyes shut.

“Enough,” he finishes when he opens his eyes again. “No, no place... uh, sssssss... space.”

“But you’re so skinny!” Jack mock protests. “Let me fatten you up!”

“You... drink, eat! Eat me,” Ianto says. “Like... like, uh, er...”

He shakes his head and brushes it aside, evidently deciding that the sentence is not worth pursuing. 

“Oh, Ianto Jones,” Jack whispers to him. “I could eat you anyday.”

Then he abandons the chocolate berries for a much better option.

This is not the only time Ianto turns down what he would normally enjoy. Jack wonders if brain damage changes taste or appetite, or if this is just Ianto being stubborn. Or maybe his body has been retrained to less food. 

Jack calls on professional help.

All right, Rhys Williams does not constitute as a professional in anything except being a pain in Jack’s ass, but he does make a mean lasagna. During a phone call with Gwen while Ianto took a shower, she suggested his help. Jack argued with her about it, but she said she nearly gained three pounds when she first started dating him. Ianto should gain more than three, but Jack is willing to try anything at this point.

“Yyyou... don’t, uh... you don’t make,” Ianto says suspiciously as he eyes the rack of lamb. 

“Rhys did,” Jack says. 

Ianto stares at him in horrified awe. “You need, ask... you ask... him?”

“Umm,” Jack says. “He was being nice?”

Ianto raises a skeptical eyebrow.

“We should eat it before it gets cold,” Jack says before further conversation occurs.

Ianto gives him a look, one that says he knows what Jack is doing, but he says nothing. Whether that is by choice or by inability, Jack does not know, but at the moment he is grateful. 

* * *

Ianto finally starts listening to Tosh’s Playaway. Jack suspects it is more out of boredom than an attempt for deeper comprehension of others’ words. Two months he has been stuck at home, and a longer time before that spent in hospitals. He must be out of his mind by now, Jack surmises, and he cannot even express how crazy that is making him.

Jack watches him listen to the audiobook. Sometimes, Ianto’s mouth starts moving as he puzzles out a sentence that is too long and too complex for him to understand. Occasionally he can work them out himself, but a lot of the time he will come to Jack, sigh apologetically and replay the sentence so that Jack can make it less wordy and less confusing. 

“Thank yyyou,” Ianto can say now. He worked hard to get himself to say those two words. Most of the time, he can say them together. He still slurs his “you”s quite a lot. 

“You’re welcome.” Half the time, Jack will end it in a long kiss that leads away from audiobooks and to the bedroom. 

“Fuck,” Ianto says one time afterword. 

“Again?” Jack teases.

“Ah, no. Just... just fuck.”

Fuck is Ianto’s best word. Always at the ready. Ianto uses it to describe half of his emotions. Owen thinks that is funny when Jack tells him that.

“Can you...“ 

Jack raises an eyebrow as Ianto searches for the right word.

“Read,” Ianto finishes. He frowns for a moment, considering if this is the right word, then nods. “Read. You make, um... nice. Easy, and... easy. Easier.”

Jack looks at him, stunned.

“You want me to read to you?” Jack asks, not for clarification, because he knows exactly what Ianto meant, but because Ianto never asks for things. He prefers to sit and suffer.

“Yes, ah... yes. Sssssss...” 

Jack tries not to cut across or guess his words, but this time Jack has to stop him. He knows that look on Ianto’s face.

“Don’t you dare apologize,” Jack warns him. “Don’t be sorry for things you want.”

“Sorry.” Ianto smirks at Jack’s half glare. Then his somber look returns. “B-but... you... don’t want to, um... worry, bother! Bother.”

“You’re not bothering me,” Jack says. “You would never bother me. Especially not with this. You know I like to hear myself talk.”

Ianto grins. “Yyyou, you, um. You... always talk. And… stories.”

Jack rolls over onto his stomach and looks up at Ianto. “Stories?”

“You always… stories.” Ianto points to himself. “Brother... boy... boyfriend... can’t make words.”

“No. If anything, I’ll say you’re the boyfriend who makes the best coffee this side of the Milky Way,” Jack says. “Plus, a cute nose and literally the best ass I've ever seen.”

Ianto rolls his eyes. Jack runs a hand up his stomach.

“Really,” Jack says earnestly, but Ianto’s eyes twinkle down at him mischievously. 

“You... best stupid.” Ianto frowns to himself. “Stupid, and... and best. Hot.”

“Stupid?” Jack asks, mock affronted.

“Gets... dead. Die. Death. Um.” He shakes his head. “Kill. Ah, fuck.”

“Haven’t died in a while,” Jack says. “I think that merits some intelligence.”

“Not... not fault, choice... choice,” Ianto says. “You... here. Not at, um, lamp. Lamp... sssssssun... sun... fuck!” 

Ianto shoots up in bed, as if the elevation will give him clarity. 

“Words, fuck!” he says. Then he takes some breaths in and out and tries it again. “Lamp, sun... torch! Torch… and, fuck, um… wwwwood… torch, and wood. Torch-wood. Torchwood!”

He throws his hands up in the air in jubilation, then flops back onto the bed.

“Torchwwwood,” he informs Jack. “You... here, not Torchwood.”

“Well, unless you murder me every night when I sleep, I’m not going to be dying here, am I?”

Ianto stares at him.

“Of course I don’t die here,” Jack simplifies. “So does that make me smart, if I stay here?”

“Yes. No! Yes. Um.” He shakes his head, probably truly unsure what he really means. “Don’t know.”

“Oh.”

There is a silence for a moment before Ianto speaks again. 

“I, me... no. Not... staying?”

Jack does not know if Ianto is posing the question to himself, if he is just trying out the word for size, or if he is actually asking Jack if he has to leave.

“We’re not moving,” Jack says.

“Nnno,” Ianto says. “Not... don’t want... staying. Not staying, um...”

He bites his lip momentarily as he works out another way to say what he means. 

“Going,” he says. “Torch... torch-wood.”

Jack’s heart drops to his stomach. 

“No,” he says, forcefully and quickly. “No. Absolutely not.”

Ianto’s gaze goes icy cold. Jack sits up and Ianto follows in suit, both preparing for a fight. 

“Yyyou g-going,” Ianto says. “You... Torch-wood. I know.”

“Ianto, they need me,” Jack says. “They only have three people.”

“They... mmmme. Me, use me,” he says. 

“No,” Jack says adamantly. “You can’t go back.”

Ianto’s mouth tries to form a question, but it does not come out. He pinches the bridge of his nose. Agitation does nothing for his word formation. 

“Wwwhy?” he manages the third time.

“Why do you think?” Jack asks, folding his arms.

“Stupid,” Ianto says automatically. 

“What? No!” Jack cries. “You’re not stupid!”

Ianto gives him a disbelieving look. “Somebody… some, everybody. They think… think... Fuck! They think... stupid. Me.”

“Then everybody else is stupid,” Jack says. “But that’s not why you can’t go back.”

“Why?” Ianto demands again. 

“You almost died a few months ago!” Jack exclaims. “Why would you go back? That place is dangerous!”

Ianto is shaking his head even before Jack finishes his sentence.

“Nnnn... nnnot me,” he says in complete denial. “Me, I... not k-kill, die. Dead. Not me.”

“What, just because you survived Canary Wharf?” Jack asks.

That is a low, low blow. Ianto’s eyes go dark, but Jack cannot take it back now, even when he tries.

“Sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that.”

“Yes,” Ianto grits out after a second. “Yes, you... you did.”

Then he gets up out of bed and makes for the bathroom, slamming the door behind him as he goes. Jack buries his face in his hands as the shower starts up. He pulls his face up and folds his hand under his nose and listens to the sounds of the shower. 

Ianto practices words in the shower. He is practicing one Jack cannot make out when he slips under the water with him, and he stops dead when Jack wraps his arms around his waist and plants a kiss into his shoulder.

“You were right,” he tells Ianto. “I am stupid.”

Ianto huffs, but Jack’s words seem to ease something within him, because he relaxes into Jack’s hold.

“I want me, I, mmmmm… my...” He turns in Jack’s grip, looking him directly in the eye, sadness and longing written in his face. He takes a breath and says it again. “I want my words.”

Jack pulls him close, presses their foreheads together, holds him with one arm and rubs his other hand behind Ianto’s neck.

That is the best sentence Ianto has said. No slurs, stammers, pauses. Perfect. Yet it breaks Jack’s heart in ways he cannot begin to explain. 

“I know,” he says, and it comes out as a whisper, nearly lost in the shower’s spray, “I know.”

Ianto sobs gently as Jack’s hand caresses his neck, both of their tears mingling with the water drops until neither of them knows which is which. 

* * *

Ianto’s left hand is faring better nowadays, so he begins making food and drink again. He can now hold a full teacup steady in his left hand. It still cramps easily, still hurts him a lot.His left leg still sometimes wobbles beneath him and he limps so hard some days that Jack wants to shove him onto the couch and tell him not to move. But he is getting better. 

“You, ah... you... hungry, no, thirsty?” Ianto asks him one morning.

Jack shrugs. “I suppose.”

“You want... um. Brown… um. Tea. No! Fuck.” Ianto takes a deep breath. “Not tea...fuck tea. You want… cofffffff... eeee. Coff-ee. Coffee. You want coffee?”

Jack positively beams. This is the first time Ianto has made coffee since the accident. 

“Oh, yeah.”

“Okay,” Ianto says, and then turns to make the coffee with a look of determination that Jack finds utterly adorable. He will never tell Ianto because Ianto would have his hide for calling him “adorable.”

Ianto makes him three cups of coffee that morning. Jack is not certain if this is because Ianto is trying to refamiliarize himself with the practice or if Ianto simply has nothing better to do. It might be both, he suspects. Ianto has run out of all the audiobooks Tosh and Jack have given him. 

“Ianto, if you give me anymore coffee, my head will explode,” Jack says before Ianto can attempt to offer another one. He has not had this much caffeine since before the accident, and the migraine just might kill him.

Ianto makes a face. “No... um. No, no... blow up. Don’t blow up... in home. House.”

“Don’t feed me anymore coffee, then.”

He agrees not to make more coffee. Instead, he decides to make biscuits. 

Ianto was never much of a cook or baker before the accident. That being said, he does not know a single thing about baking biscuits. Add to that the fact that he cannot read the instructions, and the house nearly burns down.

“Ssssssssssss...“ Ianto tries as Jack waves a baking sheet at the light smoke. “Sorry.”

“I think you should let me do the cooking,” Jack says. “And baking.”

Ianto concedes, waving a hand to him. “Yes. You... you bake.”

“I’m going to go buy us some air freshener,” Jack says. “And possibly a gas mask. This house is going to stink like smoke forever.”

Ianto rolls his eyes. “Drama.”

“I’m not being overdramatic.”

“Drama,” Ianto repeats in mock seriousness.

Jack kisses him then. He can feel Ianto’s smile in the kiss, which is something he has always loved. Happiness and love fit right together, in Jack’s mind. Love should never be unhappy. Sad, depressed, painful, of course. That is what happens when you go through tough times with someone. But unhappiness should never come anywhere near love. They do not belong.

When Jack returns with some things to aerate the house, Ianto is nowhere to be found. He searches the house twice, calling for him the entire time. Ianto is not here. Jack knows he should not panic. There is probably a very simple, reasonable explanation for this. He panics anyway.

“Gwen,” he says the moment she picks up. “Gwen, it’s...”

“Jack, I’m busy right now. Can this wait five minutes?”

“Ianto’s missing.”

“What?”

“He’s not here,” Jack says. “I don’t know where he went.”

“I’m sure he’s just going for a walk.”

“He doesn’t go for walks!”

“Then he’s out... drinking, maybe.”

“He doesn’t drink, either!”

Gwen sighs. “I don’t know, Jack, I’m busy. I have things to do. Ianto’s a big boy, he can take care of himself. I’m sure there’s a very good reason behind it. Calm down.”

“But...”

“He’ll be fine, Jack,” Gwen says, then rings off.

Jack stares at the phone in disbelief. He cannot blame Gwen, because she probably is as busy as she says, yet he still wants her to take this more seriously. He supposes she is right, really. Ianto can take care of himself. But Jack worries and worries and worries, until he cannot think straight. There is a reason he briefly resigned from Torchwood. Every moment without Ianto in sight is fucking terrifying. One hundred and fifty plus years of life of learning how to be independent and he unravels because of one man.

He waits by the phone, just in case someone calls him. Ianto will not call, because Ianto thinks himself to be inarticulate over calls, without facial expressions and gestures to back him up. His speech therapist thinks he should be trying things like calls to get him to expand his vocabulary. Ianto hates Dr. Williams with a burning passion. Anyway, it is entirely possible that Gwen could call Jack back with information, or Owen or Tosh, or God forbid, even the hospital. Please do not let it be the hospital, Jack prays to himself.

The door opens suddenly and Jack finds himself face to face with Owen and Ianto. They both look defiant, but Jack can see the sheepishness behind their facades when he glares at them.

“Where were you?” Jack asks.

“Inside... no, no. Out. Outside,” Ianto says. “We... Owen... and... and car. Driving.”

“Why?”

Ianto shrugs. “Boring. Um... bored.”

“You can’t just leave because you’re bored!”

“No?” Ianto asks. “It’s... usual. Ah. N-normal.”

“That isn’t... that’s not my point, Ianto,” Jack says, because Ianto got him there.

Ianto puts his hands on his hips. “Wwwhat... point?” 

“My point... my point is you’re meant to be recovering!” Jack says. “You shouldn’t be out there, you should be here!” 

“You, you... can’t sssstay! Can’t... making I, me... can’t... mmmake me...” Ianto closes his eyes tight, evidently trying to force the words out. “Can’t making, make... can’t make me... sssssssssssssssssss... ah, fuck!”

The side of his fist slams into the wall. Owen startles and jumps, but Jack has heard louder and angrier outbursts than even this. He does not move an inch as Ianto rounds on him.

“You!” Ianto says, clearly seething as he points at Jack. “Make, making me... angry! Can’t... wwwords! Can’t make wwwords!”

Jack opens his mouth and then shuts it. Ianto is glaring at him with the rage and brilliance of a thousand suns. He wants to give Ianto an apology, or at least an apologetic look, but Ianto is far too pissed off for that now, it seems, so he keeps his face blank and waits as Ianto tries to calm himself down enough to find his words. 

“Can’t make... me stay,” Ianto says when he can. “No... no right. Um. Reason. No reason.”

“Look, I just meant...”

Ianto silences him with another glare. When Jack shuts up, he sighs and closes his eyes, shaking his head tiredly.

“I know... um, you... you... fear. Worry! Worry. Worried.” Ianto opens his eyes and shakes his head again. “But, um. You, ah. You... can’t make... can’t make me stay.”

“I know,” Jack says quietly. “You’re right. I’m just worried.”

So many scenarios run through Jack’s head. Ianto gets hit by another car. Ianto gets mugged. Ianto gets ridiculed for his speech. Someone thinks Ianto is having a stroke and sends him to the hospital. Ianto gets eaten by a rogue weevil. Ianto falls into a manhole. 

“I, um.” Ianto holds up a hand. “We, we... car. I... work, practice. Words.”

“Tenses, Ianto,” Owen says.

Jack glares at him, because the first thing Dr. Williams said was that Ianto should be making his own corrections. But Ianto does not seem to mind for some reason, instead immediately reviewing his words. 

“Um. I, I… practice. Practicing. I... practicing. No. Practice... practiced.” He sighs in relief. “I, ah, practiced. Yes. I practiced... words. And... in car, and... Owen... help. Helped.” 

He glances over to Owen, who gives him a nod of approval. Then he turns back to Jack, takes a deep breath and continues. 

“I... not staying,” he says. “Can’t... staying. Stay. Um, I... need. Want. Want... going... Ah. Fuck. Um. Go...um, Torch-wood.”

Jack immediately opens his mouth to object, because why would he not? But Ianto stops him with a hand in the air.

“I... mmmake, no... I have, er. Rights. No! Reasons. I... have reasons.” 

Jack folds his arms. “And they are?”

Ianto looks at Owen briefly. Owen returns the look with one of encouragement. Ianto huffs out a breath. 

“Can make... tea. Fuck! Coff-ee.” Ianto frowns to himself. Neither Jack nor Ianto know why Ianto always says tea instead of coffee, but it really pisses Ianto off. “I can make... coffee. Yes. And... and, uh. Can... feed d-dino... dino-saur. And, um. And... www... wwwe... we...”

He lets out a frustrated sigh and addresses Owen. “Can’t.”

“Yes you can,” Owen says. “We worked on it.”

Apparently bolstered by this, Ianto makes his best attempts at getting the word out. “We...vv... Weeeev...ils. Weev-ils. Weevils.”

He lets out a relieved sigh and turns back to Jack. “Can feed dino-saur and... and weevils. I can... wash, clean... clean up.”

“And I could always use a spare pair of hands down in the autopsy room,” Owen adds. Ianto frowns curiously at him and Jack takes it that this was not something they had discussed in the car. 

“No,” Jack says. “It’s too dangerous.”

Ianto heaves a heavy sigh and rubs his forehead.

“It is!” Jack declares. “Just because you were lucky beforehand doesn’t mean you will be now.”

“Can... trying. Try,” Ianto says. “No... no... um, pain. Hurt. Hhh... um. Harm! No harm.”

“Yes, there is,” Jack scoffs. “There is every harm in trying! What if you get torn apart by something before you can call for help?”

“Won’t,” Ianto says defiantly. “Can still... gun. Use gun.”

“But...”

“Please,” Ianto says.

It comes out more easily than any other word he has said, excluding “fuck” of course, and Jack feels his argument slip away from him in an instant. Paired with the look on Ianto’s face, there is no denying this. He wants to, he wants to so badly, but he cannot. 

“We can try it out,” Jack says wearily. “But the moment it goes south...”

Ianto rolls his eyes at the vague threat, but is grinning pleasedly. He offers them coffee, which Owen accepts with the eagerness of an addict finally getting his next fix. 

“Why?” Jack asks Owen quietly when Ianto has gone. 

“He called me,” Owen says in his defense. “I thought something was wrong, so I came over. He stopped me before I could even get out of my car and told me to drive. Well. Sort of.”

“And you listened?”

“He’s frustrated, Jack. He wants to go back to the life he had. And he deserves to. He doesn’t need to be locked up in a house all day.”

“I know that!”

“Do you?” Owen asks. “You want to wrap him up in cotton and keep him on the shelf for you to look at.”

“Can you blame me?” Jack asks. “Look what happened!”

“Yes. A bad thing happened. But it had nothing to do with Torchwood, you, or Ianto. Just a stupid idiot who thought he was more important than everyone else in the entire fucking world.” Owen sighs. “He’ll be all right.”

“I hope so,” Jack says. “If this goes wrong, it’s on your head.”

“Yeah. I figured as much.”

They stand in silence, eyeing each other warily as the Ianto and the coffee machine work their magic in the kitchen. 

“Was it like this with Katie?” Jack asks abruptly. 

“What, Ianto’s speech?” Owen peers down the hall to the kitchen. He sighs and rubs tiredly at his eyes. “Yeah. A bit.”

Jack gives him a wry smile. “Sorry I brought it up.”

“I’m still pissed at you for that, by the way,” Owen says. 

“I know.”

“And this time... it’s worse this time,” Owen continues. “Cause this time, it’s not an alien starfish eating his brain, or whatever. It’s just him.”

“You helped him, though,” Jack says. “That ought to count for something.”

“Yeah, well, I figured... if I couldn’t help her, I could at least try to help him.”

“I’m surprised he didn’t snap at you. He hates it when Dr. Williams reminds him about things.” 

“What, like tenses?” When Jack nods, Owen shrugs. “I suppose it’s just me charm, innit?”

“You don’t have charm,” Jack snorts as Ianto returns with coffee.

“No,” Ianto agrees. He passes Owen a mug. 

“Well, serves me right. See if I help you out in the future.”

But Jack catches the slight wink that is passed from Owen to Ianto. He closes his eyes and prays that the world will not come to an end.

* * *

To his credit, Ianto refrains from violently flinching the entire car ride. Maybe he is trying to prove to Jack he can do this. If he is, it is a futile effort. Jack will never be convinced that this is a good idea. He hates it for two reasons. One- the obvious. Ianto could get hurt again. He probably will. This scares Jack to death. Two- it degrades Ianto. Ianto used to be the archivist. He held a good position on the team. Now he is headed back to his role before the whole Lisa-incident, as a janitor. Not that there is anything wrong with janitors and not that Jack is mad that Ianto cannot read or write like he used to, but Jack is just worried that Ianto will be treated like he was back then. Ianto does not deserve that.

They take the tourist center entrance. Jack can hear Ianto’s breath catching in his throat as they step into the shack. He reaches out behind him and feels Ianto’s hand slip into his. 

“You ready?” Jack asks Ianto.

Ianto’s face contorts into something not dissimilar to fear before he schools his face and nods resolutely.

“Right,” Jack says with a sigh. “Then let’s go.”

He reaches across the desk, careful not to let all the dust collect on his arm, and presses the hidden button for the secret entrance. They step through together and they do not let go of each other’s hands. 

Jack can practically feel the instant Ianto relaxes as they step through the cog door. 

“Ianto!” 

Tosh is bounding down the stairs, dashing across to greet them. She throws herself at Ianto, hugging him tight. She only lets go when Gwen tries to cut in to do the same. 

“Oi, that’s enough,” Owen says from behind them. “You’ll suffocate him.”

Ianto rolls his eyes as Owen comes to smack him behind the shoulder blades.

“Good to see you back,” Owen says. “Now make me some fucking coffee.”

“Owen,” Jack warns, but Ianto is rolling his eyes again good naturedly, but it is aborted halfway through as his eyes spot something.

“Fuck,” he whispers. Jack follows his gaze to see Myfanwy soaring around the water tower.

He moves past a silently laughing Owen and the confused Tosh and Gwen. Jack suspects the sudden cursing on Ianto’s part is something they are all going to have to get used to. 

Jack and the rest turn and follow Ianto to the now squawking dinosaur. Myfanwy has dropped to the floor and is eyeing Ianto with keen interest, which is intriguing because Jack has never seen her do that before. He supposes Myfanwy is just saying hello, just as Toshiko, Gwen and Owen have. Myfanwy did always adore Ianto, Jack just had not realized how much until now.

“Mmmm...” Ianto tries. “Mmmfff...”

It takes Ianto fifteen attempts to say “Myfanwy.” In those few minutes, Gwen seems to get uncomfortable, Toshiko abruptly remembers something with a small “oh!” and Owen gets bored out of his wits, so the three of them leave. Only Jack stays with him to the end to see him grin madly and pat her crest fondly. 

“My-fan-wy,” Ianto says. “Mmmm... fuck.”

He waves it off though, apparently too eager to be truly upset that his hard work went to waste. He looks about the hub with excitement and Myfanwy takes the opportunity to let out an oversized “caw” before batting her wings and taking off again. 

Ianto turns to Jack, still grinning ridiculously. 

“Well?” Jack asks. 

“H-home,” Ianto says, shrugging. “Good.”

Jack does not want to smile. He does not want to feel happy about this. He does not want to want Ianto here.

But he does.

* * *

There is a power struggle between Jack and Gwen. Jack does not want his old job back, not really. He never wanted it in the first place, especially not the way he got it, and it had been good to have months where he did not have to make a judgement call on someone’s life. But it is hard to let the position go now that it is so ingrained within him. The two of them try their best, but it does not always work. They fight a lot. 

Ianto, in his first half of a month back, is doing all right. Just all right. It seems to Jack that he is getting increasingly frustrated that he cannot read, because Jack has seen him go down to the archives and return with suspiciously puffy and red eyes. Jack has taken him on weevil hunting trips to make up for it, and Ianto does all right with those, so Gwen and Jack have changed his role to weevil-wrangling janitor. It seems to cheer him up a bit, even if it does make his leg ache to the point where he is shouting in pain as Jack attempts to massage it better. 

Other than that, there are very few problems. The only other pressing one is how Gwen deals with Ianto. Jack knows she is not trying to be crass and that she is trying to be kind and helpful, but it genuinely torments Ianto when she tries to guess the words out of his mouth. 

“She, ah...” Ianto shakes his head. “She... bothering. Me. Uh. Yeah.”

“She’s not trying,” Jack says, to be fair to her. 

“I... I know,” Ianto says. “B-but... she, er... hard. This... hard. Trying, and... guessing not... guessing not helping.” 

“Yeah. You should tell her.”

Ianto rolls his eyes. “No, she only... guessing, and... bothering. You, ah... you.”

“Me?” Jack asks.

“Nnnot listening... me,” Ianto says with a shrug. “Listening... um, you.”

“I doubt it,” Jack says. 

As it turns out, both Jack and Ianto are both wrong and right. Gwen stops, but only a little. She continues to guess words out of his mouth when they are in the conference room and Ianto tries suggesting things. 

“Ssssssssssssstop!” Ianto eventually yells one day. “Just... ssssstop!”

Gwen blinks. “Sorry.”

“No, yyyou... you not.”

“Verb, Ianto.”

Ianto glares at Owen and growls, “You. Are. Not.”

Then he gets up from the table and stalks off.

“Way to go, Owen,” Toshiko mutters.

“How is this my fault?”

“He’s already pissed at Gwen and you just made it worse!”

“He’s the one who asked for my help!”

“He already knows what he’s doing wrong!”

“Yeah, and my suggestions help him get it out!”

“Not always!”

“Guys, can we get back on track?” Gwen asks.

Both Toshiko and Owen round on her. 

“You started this!” Tosh says. “You keep nagging him and he hates it!”

“At least he gets some use from my suggestions,” Owen adds. “You’re not helping him at all!”

“I was helping you!” Gwen says. “It gets the meetings done faster!”

Jack sighs and stands up quietly, following the path Ianto took out of the conference room and leaving them all bickering about things that are traveling further and further from Ianto. 

He finds Ianto sitting up in Myfanwy’s aviary, watching Myfanwy wheeling through the air, around the base of the tower and over the waters down below. Sometimes Jack thinks Ianto likes Myfanwy best of all, because she does not expect anything but food, chocolate and pets from Ianto. She does not give a damn if he cannot string a full sentence together, or if he cannot say her name without getting stuck on one of the many tricky letters for Ianto. She does not try to guess the words Ianto is trying his very best to say, she does not correct him for things he already knows are wrong, and does not try to see if he can read. (Toshiko has developed a habit of trying to get Ianto to read again, by “accidentally” slipping him files and by pointing out things on her computers that she thinks he could probably understand if he tried hard enough.) Myfanwy does not even whine about Ianto possibly dying any day like Jack does. Myfanwy is Ianto’s fuck-word of people, or in this case, not-people. Easy, dependable, and always there for him.

Jack sits down beside him, dangling his feet over the edge and kicking them back and forth. Ianto frowns at them and Jack stops. Ianto has his own feet tucked criss-cross and is sitting a few inches away from the ledge, just to be safe. Ianto has always been just a little fearful of heights. 

“They don’t mean it,” Jack says after a few moments. 

“Yes. They, um. They... they... they! Argh! Fuck!” 

Ianto’s hand runs through his hair until it stops and clenches as a fist in there. Ianto closes his eyes and takes deep breaths, but Jack does not think these are in anyway calming.

“Hey, hey,” Jack says, practically prying the hand away from Ianto’s hair. “None of that, now.”

Ianto cracks one eye open. It looks absolutely furious. 

“Don’t... sssay,” he snaps angrily.

“Sorry,” Jack says gently. “I’m sorry.”

Ianto’s eye closes again and Jack watches with a broken heart as tears begin to leak and trail down his face. Jack loops an arm around Ianto and pulls him close, and Ianto leans his head on Jack’s shoulder as he begins to quietly sob.

They sit there for a while. Nobody comes looking for them. Jack wonders if Gwen, Owen, and Tosh even remember that they are missing. They might not. They had gotten used to them being gone during the months that Ianto was busy recovering. 

Eventually Ianto regains some control of himself, sniffs, and sits back up.

“Wwwhen?” Ianto asks. “When... good, better?”

“Ianto...” Jack says sadly. Dr. Williams had not given them much reason to hope.

“N-nnot... not me,” Ianto says. “This.”

He gestures below to the hub.

“When... this better?” he asks. 

“I don’t know,” Jack says honestly. “Maybe it won’t.”

Ianto sighs, then rubs the heel of his good hand to an eye. “Miss... you.”

“I’m right here, Ianto.”

“Nnno,” Ianto says, shaking his head. “Miss... you, um... lead. Leading.”

Jack studies him. Jack does not miss being in charge, except for that small part that does. But he supposes, back when Jack was in charge, things were the best they had ever been for Ianto. Ianto’s life had probably never been happier than in the few months after Jack returned from the Year and before the accident. 

“Well,” Jack says, “we could always leave.”

Ianto shakes his head again, harder. “Nnno! Want... not going, and... staying.” 

“Things won’t go back to the way they were just because we stick around,” Jack says.

“I know,” Ianto says. He gestures again to the hub. “I... know.”

“Then what do we do?” Jack asks, because if he is honest, he is also starting to feel like this place is no longer home anymore.

Ianto shrugs. “Don’t... don’t know.”

“Me neither.”

He pulls Ianto back again and they sit there holding each other, until Toshiko remembers they exist and calls them down to go fetch a rogue weevil up in Splott.

* * *

Two months pass in a blur as the rift picks up. So many things happen during that time that Jack can barely keep them straight. Weevil-gangs, the hoix mating season, sentient fish from Scotland, a body switch that nobody can remember, mauve squirrels and coquelicot hedgehogs. And now, a crashed spaceship. 

Toshiko had read no lifesigns left. The pilot has died, and Jack and Owen are going out to determine the cause. Jack disobeys Gwen’s orders and brings Ianto along too. Ianto has been spending too much time alone in the hub and it hurts Jack to see him so obviously depressed. Jack is willing to forego safety just the once if it can get Ianto to smile again. Gwen and her motherly disposition do not agree.

“Jack Harkness, you turn that car right back around and bring him back,” Gwen orders, “or so help me God, I...”

“Sorry, Gwen, you’re breaking up,” Jack says, with the help of Owen making static-y sounding noises in the background. “See you later!”

Jack jabs the S.U.V.’s comm. unit off. He looks up into the mirror to catch Ianto’s amused eyes from the back seat. 

“Sorry, mummy and daddy have gotten into a fight and it looks like daddy won custody,” Jack says.

Ianto snorts and rolls his eyes and Owen groans.

“No more jokes for the rest of forever,” Owen grumbles.

“Hey. I’m funny.”

“Nnnno,” Ianto says from the back seat. 

Jack mock glares through the mirror and is absolutely delighted when the corners of Ianto’s mouth turn up as he glances away. It really is good to see a smile on him, even if it is only the beginnings of one. 

Fortunately the ship crashed down in a remote area where very few people would see it, and Toshiko had already started spinning a story about a private jet going down just in case someone reported it. Unfortunately the remote area where very few people would see it just happened to be the Brecon Beacons and none of the men are pleased to be back there. They have to hike to the site, which starts bringing out all of their nerves.

“Fucking cannibals,” Jack hears Owen mumble to himself a few times. “Fucking countryside. Fucking Wales.”

Ianto makes a disgruntled noise every time he hears that last comment. 

“It’s just up there,” Jack says eventually, pointing in the direction.

“How do you know?” Owen asks.

“P.D.A. says so,” Jack says. “And there’s a big spot that looks like a car wreck.”

Owen looks where Jack is pointing and grumbles to himself. Ianto on the other hand makes a small, terrified sound in the back of his throat. Owen, who does not hear it, keeps hiking onwards, still grumping, but Jack hangs back a moment with Ianto.

“You okay?” Jack asks him. He knew he never should have let Tosh show Ianto the pictures of his crash. 

“Yes,” Ianto says after a moment. 

“It’s okay if you’re not,” Jack says. “We can go back. Owen can deal with it.”

Ianto shakes his head. “Nnno. I can... do this.”

“Okay,” Jack says, but he is not entirely convinced. 

“Come on, loverboys!” Owen yells from a short ways ahead of them. 

“Sometimes I want to punch him,” Jack says lightly as he takes Ianto’s hand.

Ianto hums in agreement and they begin to follow Owen to the crash site. 

“Oh. Wow,” is all Jack can say as they stand below the ship.

“What?” Owen asks.

“This is an H47 Rustbucket,” Jack says.

Ianto raises an eyebrow, obviously noting the reverence Jack cannot hide from his tone.

“First girlfriend in the academy had one of these,” Jack explains. “I dated her for her ship and she knew it. She let me fly hers anytime in exchange for...”

“We get it, you fucked her for her car,” Owen cuts in. 

“She called it Lightning Rod. Dunno why,” Jack says, reaching a hand out to stroke the vessel. “Suppose it stopped everyone from mentioning her attitude problems.”

“Why?” Owen asks. “Were these things popular?”

“No, no,” Jack laughs. “Absolutely not. They’re called Rustbuckets for a reason. It was just that nobody else had a ship. Nobody had anywhere to dock one. The academy didn’t have ports, but she had an uncle who lived nearby who could store it for her. Still, they’re a lovely ship, if you have the patience to get them up and running.”

Jack and Ianto wait as Owen surveys the body, which had tumbled out of the open sidehatch and onto the grass. Owen pronounces him dead.

“Obviously,” Jack says as Ianto rolls his eyes. “What from?”

“Laser gunshot wound. There’s a fair bit of alcohol in his system, too. My guess is he got wasted, got on somebody’s bad side, then hightailed it out of there, only to die and let his ship crash.”

“Stupid,” Ianto spits angrily. 

Jack throws him an odd look, then remembers, right. Drunk drivers. He puts a hand on Ianto’s shoulder and Ianto sighs and looks away. So much for getting Ianto to smile on this trip. 

When soothing Ianto does not go as planned, Jack returns his attention to the ship. This is a beautiful example of a Rustbucket and it is an utter pity that it crashed. The wings and dorsal fin look to be intact though and the nose dive appears to have done nothing to the structure. All in all, it seems to be in good shape, save for all the dirt and the slightly smoking thrusters. 

“Owen?” Jack asks. 

“What?”

“Do you know what Gwen wants done with the ship?”

“Ummm... I think she said something about getting one of Rhys’s lorries to haul it to a warehouse for safekeeping.”

“Brilliant,” Jack murmurs to himself.

Ianto might not be smiling, but Jack sure is.

* * *

Jack manages to fit in two hours each day of fixing the ship. Ianto comes with him sometimes, though he does not understand the real reason Jack is fixing the ship. He just thinks Jack needs a hobby. Sometimes he even helps Jack. Ianto needs a hobby too.

“See, normally these are built to fit a family of four,” Jack tells him one day. “See the bunks?”

Ianto turns to look at the main sector of the ship, which has a raised platform in the middle and two stacked slots in the side walls. Jack always used the platform as a table and the lower bunks as storage.

“Four people,” Jack continues, “but it really best fits under three people. It’s kind of small, if you hadn’t noticed.”

“Nnnot... small, er. Very.” 

“No, but fit two unhappily married adults and two screaming kids in here, and you’ll find yourself wishing you had gotten a Thunderbolt instead.”

Ianto shrugs. “I... like it. It’s... nice.”

Jack smiles to himself as he pries off a panel to get to the wires for the inner heating system. 

“I like it, too,” Jack says. “Always wanted one of my own.”

Ianto nods, looking around the cabin with an inspecting eye. 

“H-how... long?” Ianto asks. “Before, um... finishing. Ah, finished.”

Jack frowns and takes inventory of the things still left to be done. “Another two weeks, I’d say.”

“Whole mmmonth,” Ianto says, evidently impressed.

“It’s not that badly damaged,” Jack says offhandedly. “If one of the wings or fins had snapped off, then it’d take another two or three until I could get the right parts, then another to put it together. This stuff is the easy part. Just rerouting wires and cables. Fixing up the seats. That kind of stuff.”

“Oh.” 

Jack works on the heating system for another few minutes before he feels Ianto’s eyes boring a hole through the back of his head. He sits up.

“What’s wrong?” Jack asks, pulling off his gloves.

“Nnnothing,” Ianto says, shrugging. 

“It’s not nothing, I can tell,” Jack says. “What is it?”

Ianto sighs lightly. “Jack... what... what you do? Doing?”

Jack is glad Owen is not here to hear the lack of verbs.

“I’m fixing the ship,” Jack says. “You know that.”

“...yes,” Ianto says. “B-but... what? Um. Why?”

Jack watches him momentarily, with his expectant frown. Ianto is truly beautiful and sometimes Jack just has to take a few seconds to stare.

“You really want to know?” Jack asks when Ianto’s frown gets more impatient.

Ianto raises an eyebrow to say “obviously.” “Yyyes!”

Jack sets aside his gloves and smiles up at Ianto.

* * *

They all have different reactions and they all say different things, but the general gist of it all is, “You can’t leave!” It seems to be hard for Ianto to follow along with three different people talking at the same time. Ianto looks very overwhelmed, so Jack steps in, holding his hands up for silence. They stop talking and Ianto breathes out in relief. 

Toshiko is the first to break the silence. “Why?”

Jack shrugs. “Why not?”

“Not an answer,” Owen says.

“I’m not certain you’d like the real one,” Jack counters.

“We’re not teenage girls,” Gwen says. “We can take it. Why are you leaving?”

“Better,” Ianto says. 

Three pairs of eyes turn to him. He blinks, then shakes his head, motioning for them to look back at Jack. Three synchronised heads turn back to Jack.

“He’s right,” Jack says. “Out there... it’s better for us. It’s not claustrophobic like this planet.”

“Um, I’ve seen the inside of that thing,” Owen says. “I’d say it’s pretty claustrophobic.”

“It’s not that small!” Jack protests. “Anyway, what I meant is, this planet... it’s not good for us.”

“Not another ‘backwater planet, stupid humans’ talk,” Gwen moans.

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Jack says.

“Then what are you saying?” Toshiko asks.

“Nobody,” Ianto says. “Nobody, and... expect. Expectings. Expect...”

“Expectations?” Gwen asks.

Ianto’s glare is so hard that she withers beneath it.

“Nobody’s expecting anything from us out there,” Jack continues when Ianto does not. “We don’t have to mold ourselves into what you people on Earth want us to be.”

“So you’re running away because you want to flirt?” Gwen asks.

“That’s just a benefit,” Jack says. Ianto sighs and rolls his eyes. “But that’s not what I meant.”

“You mean Ianto,” Toshiko says quietly.

Everyone looks at her, Owen and Gwen surprised, Ianto and Jack sad.

“Mmme,” Ianto agrees. 

“Why would you want to...” Gwen cuts off as Owen elbows her in the ribs. 

“We don’t expect anything out of you, Ianto,” Owen says. 

“You do,” Ianto says sagely. “You... fixing... fix words. My words. And... guessing, and making... making me read.”

“We’re just trying to help!” Gwen exclaims. “We want to help you!”

Ianto shakes his head. “N-not. Not... helping. Making... making hard.”

Owen opens his mouth, probably to correct the missing “it” but a glare from Ianto shuts him up before he can say anything. 

“Ssssss... space, um. Space... lots of... aliens,” Ianto says. “Some... um. Talk. Like me. And… and nobody expecting. Expects. Fuck. Um, nobody... expecting me... to... speaking, speak. Speak like them. And. They... know. No, um, they... under... stand. Under-stand. And... easy. Easier. Yes.”

Ianto nods to himself. Jack knows he is pleased he made it through. Jack is pleased he made it through without interruptions.

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Gwen says after a moment.

Ianto shrugs. “Mmm... me too.”

“But we’re going,” Jack says. 

“Where will you go?” Toshiko asks. 

“Anywhere,” Jack says. “We have all of space in front of us. Why settle for one destination?”

That, in many ways, is also applicable to his sexuality, but it is not like the team will ever understand that. They still try to put labels on him. Ianto gets it, though. Of course Ianto does. Ianto is amazing.

“But it’s dangerous,” Gwen says. 

“Half the fun,” Jack jokes.

Jack had been on the fence for a while because of that very reason, but then he decided space was less dangerous than Torchwood and everything fell into place from there.

“What about us?” Gwen asks. “You can’t just leave us!”

“I think you will be able to handle it on your own,” Jack says. “You did before. Hire Rhys, if you need to. Or that Andy guy.”

“We’ll never see you again.”

“I’m sure we can make a few stops,” Jack says.

“We can’t convince you, can we?” Toshiko asks softly.

Both Jack and Ianto shake their heads.

“We’re going,” Jack says. 

* * *

Toshiko, Owen and Gwen all help Jack and Ianto move the things they will not be taking with them to storage. Jack is both sorry and happy to see the house go. There were good memories made there, but also a lot of bad ones. Jack just hopes they will have better times in the Rustbucket.

They have not named the ship yet. Ianto once suggested “Fuck” because it was easiest for him to say, but Jack knows exactly what kind of attention that would draw. He personally wants to call it “Spitfire” or something, but that is a bit out of Ianto’s reach. 

“Home, sweet home,” Jack says as he moves his stuff into one of the bottom bunks. 

“We... sleeping... um. Not... not together?” Ianto asks, frowning at him.

“No, no, we are,” Jack says. He presses a button and part of the top bunk slides out, making the space bigger. “See?”

“Is... it ssssafe?” Ianto asks skeptically.

“Yeah. Trust me.” He has had enough rough sex on one of these to know that for certain. 

“Where the fuck do I put this?” Owen asks as he barges onto the ship. 

Ianto directs Owen and the box of clothing to the bottom of the other bunk. Owen sets it down gracelessly. Toshiko joins with the box of toiletries and entertainment (not that kind) and sets it down beside the other box, and Gwen soon follows with the large container of supplies and entertainment (exactly that kind). 

“You... right,” Ianto tells Jack. “Five... five people. Make... ship sssmall.”

“Yeah,” Jack says, looking between the three people he handpicked to be his team. He is going to miss them dearly.

Toshiko is the first to rush up and hug him. She holds onto him as tightly as he holds onto her.

“Beautiful Toshiko,” he whispers. “Be brave. Be smart. Be good.”

She stands back with tears in her eyes, smiles at him, then goes on to Ianto next. Gwen takes her spot.

“I’ll miss you,” she tells him.

“We’ll miss you too,” Jack replies.

The look in her eyes is sad and lonely when she turns to Ianto.

“I’m not hugging you,” Owen says. 

“Well I’m hugging you,” Jack says, encasing Owen in a large hug.

“Ugh, I’m glad you’re leaving,” Owen grumbles into his chest. “No more Captain Sexdrive.”

“You’re just regretting what we never had,” Jack laughs as he lets go.

“Yeah, you keep on thinking that.”

The three of them file out of the ship. Jack and Ianto watch out of the window as they walk back to the S.U.V.. None of them look back. Good. Jack’s heart might break if they did. 

“Ready?” Jack asks Ianto.

“Ready,” Ianto says, a hint of trepidation and excitement breaking his normal facade.

Jack smiles and kisses him one last time before they begin their new life.

* * *

**EPILOGUE**

The “Agatha Christie” turns a little too far to the left. Jack tries to keep the hiss behind his teeth, but it must have escaped, because Ianto glances up at him worriedly.

“No, no,” Jack says, “you’re doing fine.”

Ianto raises an eyebrow.

“Well, you’re a little off course, but that’s fine!” Jack says quickly when Ianto’s face falls. “Really. You’re doing great for a first-time flyer.”

Ianto snorts. “Like... airplanes.”

“Except you’re actually flying it instead of flying in it,” Jack says. “Hm. Does that make me the captain?”

“Yyyou... you always captain,” Ianto says. “Captain... Jack Hark... ness.”

“Do I get to do the sexy ‘this is your captain speaking?’” 

Ianto rolls his eyes. “Sssave... it. For later. Sir.”

“It’s a plan,” Jack says, though the “sir” goes straight to his cock. 

Then he winces as they take an abrupt jolt to the right.

Jack has been promising Ianto the chance to fly the “Agatha Christie” ever since they got into deep space. Unfortunately he had to arrange the controls first. Even if Ianto could read, it was all in a remote colony language that Jack only had a basic grasp on. Now, he has reconfigured the touchscreen panel into a tactile one of various buttons and colors for Ianto to better comprehend than blocks of the same color, size and shape that are only differentiated by vague words. 

Ianto was reluctant at first after Jack had fixed the control panel. Jack could understand that. The last time Ianto had driven anything, he had very nearly died. But then Jack reminded him that this was deep space, and nobody ever crashed out here. The only places Jack has even heard of crashes were in spaceports and in planetary traffic. Even those were negligible, with the ships guiding systems, but Jack assured Ianto he would be the one driving through those, just in case.

Now, Ianto is doing remarkably well for someone who has never been inside a flying spaceship before a month ago. Jack is impressed, though maybe he should not be. This is Ianto. Of course he is going to be good at this. 

The overhead lights of the front cabin flash red and make a whirring sound. Jack and Ianto both look up at them.

“Wwwhat… is that?” Ianto asks worriedly. 

Jack refuses to say “proximity alert.” He will not say that. Ianto will freak out if he says that. 

Instead, he says, “We have company.”

In hindsight, that hardly a better thing to say. Ianto has shown him all those cheesy sci-fi films and shows. He knows it is never a good thing when someone says that they “have company.” Still, Ianto manages to not freak out at that one as Jack moves him away from the pilots seat so that he can read the scans the “Agatha Christie” has taken of the other ship.

“Shit!” Jack says.

“Ha,” Ianto says. “Swears.”

“Ianto!” Jack says excitedly. “Look!”

“Wwwhat?” Ianto asks, a little confused. 

“Ianto, it’s the T.A.R.D.I.S.!” 

Ianto blinks at him for a moment, then sighs.

“Fuck,” he says.

An accurate description, if Jack ever heard one. 

“How do you feel about running?” Jack asks.

Ianto sighs as the T.A.R.D.I.S. docks on their docking port, but he smiles when Jack takes his hand.

“I love you,” Jack says.

Ianto grins and kisses him back fervently.

“You,” Ianto whispers into his mouth. “Love... you.”

“Hmmmmmm.”

“Are you kissing?” A voice very rudely and very cruelly interrupts. “If you’re kissing, I’ll just go.”

Jack sighs into the kiss and breaks it. Before he turns away, he takes one good look at Ianto. There is no doubting how much Jack loves him. How could he not? This is Ianto Jones, the stuff of dreams and man of miracles. He is absolutely perfect.

Jack would not change a single thing about him.

* * *

**PART TWO**

Jack Harkness sighs and buries himself closer to the source of warmth and comfort. Then an elbow gets shoved in his gut.

“Ouch,” Jack mumbles to himself.

He opens his eyes and squints at the brilliant morning light. He turns his head to squint instead at the brilliance of Ianto Jones.

Sometimes he is thrown by how much Ianto captivates him. It is like looking at the most beautiful nebula, or like stained glass windows. Jack cannot think of anything more striking than those at the moment, but if he ever does, Ianto is certain to be as wonderful as whatever it may be. 

Jack leans over and kisses Ianto’s nose. Such a cute nose. Button nose. Jack has a soft spot for those. All right, he has a soft spot for everything of Ianto’s, but that nose of his... it is just something else. 

Ianto stirs beneath Jack’s gentle kisses as he trails them up and around Ianto’s face. Jack suppresses a cheesy grin as he blinks his eyes open. Ianto moans and closes his eyes again.

“Morning!” Jack says.

“Nnno,” Ianto groans. “Not... mmmorning.”

“Up and at ‘em, sleepyhead,” Jack teases.

“Fuck yyyou.”

“Well, Mr. Jones,” Jack says, scooting even closer and pressing a kiss to Ianto’s lips. “That can most certainly be arranged.”

Jack deepens the kiss, but Ianto jerks himself away with a disgusted noise.

“Mmmorning... breath,” he says, making a face. “B-brush... teeth, please.”

“Fine, fine,” Jack sighs. “You are a cruel one, Mr. Jones.”

He gets up, making sure to throw the blankets both off himself and Ianto. Ianto moans again, and a hand searches around for the blankets, but Jack just takes the hand and yanks him into a seated position. Ianto glares at him as soon as he can open his eyes wide enough to do so.

“Come on,” Jack says. “We have to go to work.”

“Fuck wwwork.”

“Now that I’m not as fond of,” Jack says. “We can fuck at work, sure. But not work itself.”

Ianto glares harder. “H-hate you.”

“No, you don’t,” Jack says cheerfully.

“No,” Ianto sighs after a moment. “I... don’t.”

Jack kisses him once more before he can protest, then darts off to the bathroom. Ianto soon joins him and they make faces at each other through the mirror as they brush their teeth. Ianto’s faces are mainly glares while Jack attempts various seductive ones. 

When their teeth are sufficiently clean, Jack kisses him again.

“Better?” Jack asks.

“Better,” Ianto agrees. 

Jack strokes a hand gently down Ianto’s cheek before turning abruptly and marching to the closet. 

He chooses his normal blue shirt (the dark blue one this time) and his gray trousers. Ianto slips in beside him, grabbing one of his suits. Jack pulls on his socks as Ianto gets dressed, then stands to help him with his tie. Ianto’s left hand sometimes cannot handle a tie with the finesse that it used to. His hand is better than it used to be, but it is still not very good. It can manage coffee machines, brooms and mops, but tying a tie is a little beyond its capabilities. For good measure, Jack kisses the hand after he finishes tying the tie for Ianto. Then Ianto sits on the edge of the bed to slip on his socks and leg brace as Jack wanders off to make breakfast.

Toast and jam is the breakfast of choice today, because Jack takes one look at the clock and realizes they will not make it in on time if he makes something more extravagant. Ianto craves punctuality and Jack is not prepared to face the consequences of denying him that punctuality.

The drive to the hub is as silent and anxious as usual. Ianto hates cars. Jack cannot blame him. Cars and drunk drivers ruined his life. 

“Coffee, please?” Jack asks as soon as they reach the hub.

“Yes,” Ianto says.

Jack kisses him a thank you and bounded up the steps to Toshiko’s desk.

“Whatcha got?” Jack asks.

“Rift activity last night,” she tells him. “Owen and Gwen went out to get it. They should be back soon.”

True to her word, Gwen and Owen arrived moments later, looking tired and worn. Gwen has an odd box in her hands and Owen keeps shooting glares at her. 

“Right,” Gwen says as she huffs up the stairs. “Everybody, conference room. Now.”

“Do we have to?” Toshiko asks. “I’m working on calibrating the rift alert system. I can just look at whatever you’ve got later.”

“No. We are going to talk about behavior on the field.”

And they do. For an hour. It is honestly the most boring meeting Jack has ever sat through. Gwen and Owen yell at each other for a little while, which is fun, and then Gwen just starts lecturing. Jack tunes out when Ianto comes in with coffees. Ianto dishes them out and then sits in his allotted spot at the table, and then Jack loses all concentration from then on. He stares at Ianto instead, who is doing his best to follow the conversation. Jack sees every time a sentence goes over his head or annoys him or makes him laugh. Ianto is like the most interesting television show Jack has ever seen. 

Ianto catches him staring at one point. He frowns at Jack, but Jack can see the slight smile on his lips. That is good. Ianto hardly ever smiles at work anymore. 

“Okay,” Jack says when he feels this has gone on for long enough. “What’s the box?”

Owen shrugs. “Dunno. Just picked it up.”

“Which is my point!” Gwen cries. “Totally against protocol, and...”

Jack cuts her off with a hand. “So, this meeting isn’t about the box?”

“No,” Gwen says. “Why?”

“Well, you did bring it into the room with you,” Tosh says. 

“Sort of figured you’d get around to it eventually,” Jack adds, “not just yell at Owen for flirting with a hot brunette.”

“Blonde.”

Tosh and Gwen glare at Owen and he shuts his mouth and manages to look sheepish.

“Know what it is?” Gwen asks Jack.

“Nope,” he says. He reaches out and picks up the box, turning it in his hands.

The box is plain mostly, except for a few buttons on the very top. Jack experimentally presses a few. Ianto glares at him from across the table. Jack holds up a hand apologetically and does not press the last button. For all he knows, this is a bomb. With that thought, he sets it carefully back down on the table.

“Hm,” Toshiko says. “We could check the archives.”

A collective round of indifferent shrugs go around the table. It is not like anyone has any better ideas.

“Right, then. Ianto, for the sake of making my search easier, what would you classify this as?”

Ianto blinks for a moment, apparently shocked at being addressed in an important context. Then he blinks once more and the shock subsides into a blank, professional mask. He reaches forward and scoots the box over to him, studying it carefully.

“Box,” he says eventually. “And... and metal... and... b-buttons. No. Um. Box and mmmetal, and... size.”

“Okay,” Tosh says. “Anything else?”

Ianto frowns, picks the box up and turns it around in his hands a few times. When he opens his mouth to speak again, his thumb accidentally hits the button Jack had not pressed.

* * *

Ianto Jones feels wrong. He feels this way mainly because his body is off, somehow, like it does not fit quite like it should. He also feels this way because he is also staring across the table at his own face. 

“What?” He says before he means to. 

“Oh,” he says next, because that “what” came out of his mouth quicker than he expected.

“Oh my god,” he says next, because he is saying exactly what he means to say and not something else.

“Jack?” he asks finally, because he knows who was sitting in this specific spot, facing his body, before he pressed the button.

His body nods mutely from across the table. 

“Oh god,” Ianto says. 

He looks down at his hands. Definitely Jack’s hands. They marvelously do not hurt. He had forgotten what that feels like, to not be in pain constantly. He flexes his left hand. It responds perfectly. He looks up at his body to see Jack attempting the same with his real left hand. Jack contorts Ianto’s face.

“Oh my god,” Ianto repeats.

“Ummmm...”

Ianto looks over to see Gwen, Tosh, and Owen staring at him oddly. He grins at them and they frown. Oh. He wonders how his grin looks on Jack’s face. He also wonders what Jack’s smile looks like on his own face. 

“We seem to have switched bodies,” Ianto says. 

He just realizes now how odd his Welsh accent sounds in Jack’s voice. He decides he does not care. He can finally talk again! No stammering, no forcing words out from between his teeth, no saying the wrong thing! Oh, this is brilliant!

“Ianto?” Tosh asks.

“Yeah,” he says, still grinning madly.

“Jack?” Gwen asks Ianto’s body.

Jack opens his mouth (Ianto’s mouth) to respond to Gwen, but then shuts it immediately, his eyes going wide. Ianto is suddenly very aware that he is not the only one with a new speech ability. In Jack’s case, inability.

“You seem to have pulled the short stick, sorry,” Ianto tells him with a grimace.

Jack glares at him and Ianto wonders if that is Jack’s glare on Ianto’s face or if it is only Ianto’s glare. He has never seen himself this way before. He has only seen himself in mirrors. It is odd, seeing himself from the wrong side. Or the right side, depending on perspective. But Ianto shuts his mouth in any case, because Jack is very much against any self-deprecation from Ianto. Even if it is true.

“You can talk?” Gwen asks.

Ianto frowns. “Yeah. Why wouldn’t I?”

“Well, cause... you know.”

He shakes his head. “That’s my body, Gwen. Not my mind. So. Jack’s body, Jack’s brain. Technically Jack’s words.”

“Oh,” Gwen says. She throws a look of pity towards Ianto’s body, where Jack is still staring at Ianto.

“Yeah,” Ianto tells him before he can try asking. “It’s always like that. You get used to it. Sort of. Eventually.”

That thought leads him into another direction. How long is this for? Is he stuck in Jack’s body forever? The novelty of speech is going to wear off soon and Ianto will probably be very homesick for his own body. And it is already very disconcerting to see himself. 

“How long are we like this?” Ianto asks.

“Dunno,” Owen says automatically. “You’re the idiot who pressed the button.”

Ianto refrains from telling him it was his left hand, so he had not had much control over where the thumb had gone. The only reason Owen has not subjected him to tests on tests on tests is because Ianto had never found the words to voice his pain, and if he is honest, he is fine with that. No need for anyone to baby him more than they already did.

“Tosh?” Ianto asks.

“I’ll have to look at it,” she says. “What else were you going to say about how you would have archived this? Might make it go faster, if we can find another one here. Or even instructions.”

“Metal box,” Ianto says. “Archived under B, for Box, subcategory M, for metal. Possible subsubcategory B, for button, but doubtful. I’ve never seen this before, and none of my predecessors were as thorough as I was. Size of the box will even out the number of files you need to look through.”

He half expects Jack to make a comment about just exactly how thorough Ianto is or about size, but then he remembers that, right, Jack probably cannot talk right now. 

“Shit,” Ianto says.

“What’s wrong?” Gwen asks quickly.

“Give me a file.”

“Which file?” Tosh asks.

“Any file. Anything. Just hand me something to read.”

Owen tosses him a folder from in front of Gwen. 

“‘Harassment in the Twenty First Century,’” Ianto reads out loud. 

Ianto works very hard to spare Jack the embarrassment of him crying in Jack’s body. It is just that he has not read anything in a long time and wow. It feels wonderful to know just what things say. 

He looks up to see Jack in his body still staring sadly at him. Jack slowly reaches out Ianto’s good hand for the file. Ianto shakes Jack’s head.

“Don’t try,” Ianto tells him. “Just don’t. You won’t like it.”

Ianto does not like how sad Jack makes his face look. Ianto glances away automatically, eyes resting on Tosh.

“Speaking of,” Ianto says. “I know you purposely slip me files.”

Tosh blushes. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes, you do. And you think I don’t know what you’re doing.”

“I’m just trying to help,” she says. “Maybe, if you familiarize yourself enough with it...”

“You don’t think I’m not already working on it?” Ianto asks. “You’re just making me feel worse about it. Putting all these expectations on me. I can’t read, Tosh. It’s not going to happen.”

Tosh looks down at her hands and Ianto turns to Owen. He has already started, so he might as well get to everyone.

“And you,” Ianto says to Owen. “You’re not helping me out much, either.”

“Hey, you asked for my help!” Owen says. “Don’t put this on me!”

“I asked you once. For one time. Now you just piss me off. I know what words I’m missing. I’d say them if I could.”

“Look, you could have just said, mate!”

“No, I couldn’t,” Ianto says, rounding his glare onto Gwen. “I can’t get a word in edgewise, not when she’s guessing them for me.”

“You were having trouble!” she protests. “I was helping the meetings get along faster.”

“You’re making it so hard for me,” Ianto says. “So, so hard. I need to work on my words, and stealing them from my mouth hinders me more than helps me.”

The table goes silent for a while. 

“Look, um,” Tosh says after a bit. “Why don’t we go down and try to figure out what this thing is and if it can be reversed.”

“Good plan,” Gwen says. 

Tosh, Owen and Gwen leave. Ianto goes to follow them, but stops and turns back when Jack makes no attempts to even get up. Ianto leans on the table beside Jack and his body. Jack looks up at him and Ianto finds he cannot hold the gaze.

“Sucks, doesn’t it?” Ianto mumbles at the floor. 

Jack does not respond. Ianto cannot blame him. He is not sure if Jack even can. It is Ianto who worked so hard to make those words come out. Maybe all that effort and knowledge is a mental thing and transferred with Ianto into Jack’s body. 

Ianto remembers his first attempt at speaking. Jack was sitting beside him in the hospital, reading a book. All Ianto had wanted to do was ask “Jack?” so that Jack could tell him where he was and what exactly was going on. Instead, all that came out was a disconcerting moan. Jack had looked up and Ianto had seen the brief terror in his eyes before he had smiled at Ianto. Ianto tries not to think about that a lot. He also tries not to think about the time he had actually managed to say “Jack.” It had come out all wrong, but he had worked hard to get it out. Jack had looked at him, smiled amiably and returned to his book. Even to this day, Ianto is not sure Jack knows that he said his name.

So, maybe Jack cannot talk. Ianto does not want to find out.

“Come on,” Ianto says. “We should go down. The others probably need us for scans or something.”

Jack looks hesitant. Ah.

“You can lean on me if you need to,” Ianto says, “but I imagine stairs will be the only tricky part.”

Jack frowns and Ianto looks at the floor again.

“It’s not that bad,” Ianto says defensively.

Jack folds his arms and frowns harder.

“Well maybe it is, but...” He shrugs. “Like I said, I’m used to it.”

Ianto looks up sharply as Jack places his hand (Ianto’s hand) over Ianto’s (Jack’s). In that moment, everything became just a bit too weird. His own body is comforting him. He does not like that at all.

“We really need to switch back,” Ianto says, still staring at the hands. “This is weird.”

Jack laughs. It is like a warped version of Ianto’s laugh and it makes Ianto feel, well, weird. And wrong. He stands abruptly.

“Come on,” he says again.

He takes Jack’s (his own) hand and helps Jack (himself) to his feet. Jack makes an effort to walk on his own, but Ianto knows exactly how he feels right now, and knows how this will make Ianto’s body feel later. Hopefully he will be back in his own body soon enough and he does not want Jack to make it hurt more than it should, so he pulls Jack (himself) to him and helps him out.

Down in the main hub, Jack sits down on the couch behind Tosh’s desk. Ianto stands behind Tosh, looking over her shoulder at the work she is doing. It has been a while since he has understood anything her computers say.

“We have a digital archive?” Ianto asks.

“Well,” Tosh says, sounding slightly guilty. “After you were... um, gone... well, it’s hard for us to find files without your help. So I started creating a digital archive. It sorts itself. And it pulls up records automatically when we search specific parameters.”

“Cutting out the middle man,” Ianto says. Even he can hear the bitterness in his voice. 

“It’s not like that,” she says hurriedly. At his raised eyebrow, she adds, “All right, maybe it is. But you can’t blame us. You couldn’t help us and we needed the files.”

“It’s not like I had the choice.”

“I know that!” She sighs. “Look. I’m sorry, but we need this.”

Ianto swallows the knot of anger, guilt and betrayal and instead focuses on the bigger picture.

“The box?”

“Right,” Tosh says, evidently as uncomfortable as him. She shows him something on the screen.

“We have one already?”

Tosh nods. “Found in the seventies.”

“So,” Ianto says. “Any way to figure out how to fix this?”

“It does it on its own.”

“Oh, thank god. How long?”

“That depends,” Tosh says.

“On what?” Ianto asks nervously.

“Which buttons Jack pressed in which order.”

“Oh. Okay. Um.”

He begins pointing out the way Jack pressed the buttons on the box on the screen. Tosh follows him, searching through the file for answers.

“Good news,” she says. “You’re in beginners mode.”

“How long is that?”

“Twenty minutes. Technically it converts to nineteen minutes and thrity four seconds, but... twenty minutes. ”

Ianto sighs in relief. “Oh. Good.”

“Yeah. Wouldn’t want to make Jack to stay in your body for longer than necessary.”

Ianto frowns at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She winces. “Um... well, just that Jack likes to talk and... um...”

Ianto shakes his head, cutting her off. He does not want to hear it. Whatever she has to say about it is only going to anger him at this point. Instead he sighs and looks around for Owen and Gwen.

“Where are the rest?” he asks when he does not see them.

“The office,” Tosh says. 

Hiding, Ianto bets.

“How long has it been?” he asks.

“Fifteen minutes or thereabouts.”

“Right. Thanks.”

Five minutes left to say everything he has left to say. And there are so many things he has to say. Myfanwy, coffee, please, thank you, yes, no, left, right, up, down. Jack, Harkness, Captain, sir. Toshiko, Owen, Gwen. He wants to say all these things. How is he supposed to go back to a life where he cannot?

He looks over at Jack (at himself) on the couch, who is watching him. Is it really Jack who makes that face look this sad, or is that just how Ianto’s face looks? Ianto does not want to know.

Ianto sits down beside Jack and takes Jack’s (his own) left hand. It was hurting this morning and he had been unable to get his fingers to cooperate enough to tie his own tie. Ianto begins to massage it with Jack’s ungodly man hands and their thick fingers, probing at the places he knows the hand needs and soothing the places it hurts most. 

“I’ve been thinking,” Ianto says slowly and quietly, so that only Jack can hear. “I have so many things I want to say. And I only have five minutes... less than five minutes, now... left to say them all. I’ve said all I need to to Owen and Tosh and Gwen.”

Jack raises a skeptical eyebrow.

“No, really,” Ianto insists. “I mean, before... before I had lots of things to say. But they’ve heard all of that before. Now all that I have to say is ‘fuck off.’ But you...”

He sighs and turns to Jack so that they are eye to eye, which is weird, because those are his own eyes. But are close enough to Jack’s eyes that he can pretend just for a second.

“I have so many things to say to you,” Ianto tells Jack. “I don’t know if I have enough time to say them. I want to thank you in so many different ways and I don’t even know how. I also want to tell you to run the fuck away, before it’s too late.”

Jack frowns at him.

“I know you won’t, even if I beg you,” Ianto says a little sadly. “You deserve so much more than me, Captain Jack Harkness.”

Jack shakes his (Ianto’s) head violently. Ianto ignores him.

“But I suppose I’m being a little selfish right now, because I won’t.” He licks his lips nervously, an action that surely looks strange on Jack’s face. “I’ve got something more important to say. And I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time, but before I was to scared and now...”

He takes a breath in. “Now’s my only chance to really say it, isn’t it? I won’t get another go.”

Tears are stinging his eyelids, but he does not let them fall because this is Jack’s face and Jack’s tears and he does not deserve to do with them as he pleases. Instead, he lets them sit as he looks at Jack.

“I love you,” he says. “And... I don’t care if you don’t feel the same, or if...”

Jack’s mouth (Ianto’s mouth, his own goddamn mouth) crashes into his (Jack’s mouth) and Ianto is being kissed within an inch of his life. Ianto has never been kissed like this before. Heated, passionate kisses and sweet, gentle kisses, yes, but never just a kiss that says the words “I love you” planer than day. Or maybe he has. Maybe it is just that he has never been kissed by his own mouth before and the message is getting confused. Jack could kiss him like this every day, for all he knows. Judging by the ferventness, he just might.

Ianto breaks from the kiss when Gwen and Owen walk up.

“Oi, stop snogging each other,” Owen says. “You’re kissing yourselves.”

Ianto looks down at his hands, unable to look anywhere else, because Owen is right. That was weird and wrong. Just another reason that they need to forget this.

“How long do they have?” Gwen asks.

“About a minute,” Tosh says. 

“Only a minute?”

“They were on beginners mode.”

“Oh.”

“Any last words?” Owen asks Ianto. He probably thinks he is being funny, but it really hurts.

“Retcon,” Ianto says quietly.

“What?” Gwen asks.

“Ianto!” Tosh cries.

“You have to retcon us,” Ianto says. 

“But why?” Gwen demands. 

“I can’t go on, knowing I had this and then lost it,” Ianto says.

He is right. He cannot. There is no way of going back to a life of struggling to get even part of a word out, not when he just had a taste of the real thing. And then there is Jack. Jack will never get over the fact that he knows exactly what this feels like, living the way Ianto does. It will destroy Jack, and it will destroy Ianto to know he destroyed Jack.

“I can’t,” Ianto repeats. “You have to retcon us.”

“What about the rest of us?” Tosh asks. “We can’t know this and not tell you.”

Ianto shrugs. “Don’t care. Do what you want. But please... retcon us.”

“Ianto,” Gwen begins, but it does not matter what she says next. He can already feel the wrongness of his body begin to fade.

“Retcon,” Ianto says as his last word.

* * *

Jack Harkness wakes up with a start. His head is pounding. He knows a retcon hangover when he feels one. He tries to recall what he can last remember. Driving to work with Ianto is the only thing that comes to mind. As for after that, he gets a vague sense of sorrow, pain and oddly enough, a great deal of love. 

He groans lightly and tries to move. He stops immediately when he feels a warm, solid object nestled against him beneath his chin. He must have curled himself around Ianto sometime during the retcon induced sleep, because Ianto sleeps like a log and does not move an inch. Jack is the cuddler. He will cuddle anything that gets into bed with him. Once it was a cactus, thanks to a prank from Owen. It hurt. He is very glad Ianto is soft and warm and gentle and loving, not prickly and green.

Gently extracting himself from around Ianto, Jack gets out of bed. Ianto will be out for a while. It takes a larger dose of retcon for Ianto to forget things. His eidetic memory has the habit of breaking the retcon, so he needs more retcon than the standard procedure calls for. He will wake up in a little while, but chances are that he will stay in a daze for most of the day today. And he will have forgotten more than Jack.

He brushes his teeth and dresses, then goes to the kitchen to make himself some food. Instead of grabbing the oatmeal like he wants, he is distracted by the note on the counter. In his own handwriting, it tells him he took retcon by his own volition, and then is sealed with his private Time Agency code. Jack throws the note away. He had already guessed as much, anyway.

Tosh calls as he is eating his eggs.

“We’ve been retconned,” she says. 

“I know,” Jack says around a mouthful of egg. “How much did we lose?”

“A day,” Tosh says. 

“Better than last time.”

“I called Gwen. She says Rhys isn’t freaking out like last time. I don’t know what we retconned ourselves for, but... it sounds like it wasn’t too bad this time.”

“Maybe we saw things we weren’t supposed to see,” Jack guesses. 

“Maybe,” she says. “I suppose it doesn’t matter, anyway. We’re not supposed to know.”

“Yeah.”

“So... I guess that’s all.”

“Yeah. I’m staying home with Ianto today. You know how he gets after retcon.”

“Right. See you tomorrow.”

“Bye, Tosh.”

He rings off and finishes his eggs. He will make more when Ianto wakes up. Maybe some bacon and toast too, because Ianto will probably feel like shit. Large dose of retcon means large retcon hangover.

When he returns to the bedroom, it looks like Ianto is attempting to wake up but failing miserably at it. Jack grins. Adorable. He lays back down next to Ianto, taking Ianto’s face in his hands. He then proceeds to wake Ianto up in his favorite way, pecking kisses up and down and all around Ianto’s face. Ianto groans and his eyes crack open just barely.

“Nnnnnnnnnooooooooooo,” he moans, snapping his eyes shut again.

“Good morning, beautiful,” Jack whispers as he kisses Ianto’s nose. Ah, button nose. 

“Ssssssssssssssssleeping,” Ianto grumbles. “G-go... way.”

“Mm,” Jack hums. “I think I’d rather stay with you.”

“Then... let sssleeping,” Ianto says. 

“Fine. We can sleep some more.”

Ianto burrows himself into Jack’s chest and Jack wraps his arms around him. If he is awake enough to cuddle, then he is going to stay awake. But Jack is good enough to let Ianto pretend to sleep for a little while longer. 

“I love you,” Jack murmurs into his hair.

Ianto’s head jerks back, his eyes wide.

“I do,” Jack tells him. “Really. And I don’t care if you can’t say it back, or even if you don’t. I love you, Ianto Jones.”

Ianto blinks at him wordlessly for a few moments, then kisses him passionately. Jack sinks into the kiss. This says more than any words can ever say, Jack thinks. Ianto loves him and he is saying so right now through that kiss. And then Ianto pulls back and his eyes say the exact same thing, and it is absolutely perfect. 

“Can I read to you today?” Jack asks, snuggling Ianto back to his chest. They are halfway through Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile. Jack wants to finish it today, as well as give Ianto’s bad leg and hand a good massage. For some reason, he has a very distinct feeling that they need it.

“Wwwork?” 

“Ianto, you have one hell of a retcon hangover. It’s inadvisable to let you do anything today.”

“Oh.”

“So, what do you say? Massage oils, bath, books, and you and me?”

“Nnnnice,” Ianto says. 

“Nice,” Jack agrees.

This is the best thing Jack has ever felt in his entire long life.

* * *

**PART THREE**

Jack Harkness holds the hand to his lips. This is Jack’s most favorite hand in the entire universe, he decides. He kisses the back of it with reverence. Yes, definitely his favorite. Ianto’s other hand, his right hand, his good hand, it cannot compare to his left. Sure, the right hand can do wicked, wicked things when it is wrapped around Jack’s cock, but this left hand is a thing of beauty. A symbol of perseverance in a dark time, like an orchid in a snowstorm. Beautiful, fragile and miraculous.

He kisses it again and again and again, trailing kisses up and down the fingers, around the flat of the hand. Once, Ianto would never have let him do this, especially not in public. He was more reserved then. Now he has gotten used to Jack’s need to touch and be touched, to show his love and affection through physical attention. Though Jack has never shown anyone love and affection quite the way he has shown Ianto. Nobody in Jack’s very long life has gotten their hands kissed like this. Nobody else ever will. This is only for Ianto, the most beautiful man in all of space and time.

Anyway, Ianto has come a long way from yanking his hand back in fear and embarrassment. Now he is simply listening to Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express for the billionth time, ignoring Jack as Jack kisses his way around that beautiful hand of his. He only listens to that book when he is nervous. Generally he has Jack read it to him, like that very first time almost three years ago when he was barely conscious, but Jack supposes it would be a bit too on the nose to read it to him now. A bit too like that very first time. 

They are in New New New New... he cannot remember how many News... New York. The Doctor suggested this place when they had split ways when running around with him proved to be far too much for Ianto. Ianto had actually once cried from the strain all of the running had put on his bad leg. Ianto never cries when he is hurt, so it was evident that something needed to change. And now three things have changed.

One- They had left the Doctor. Obviously. 

Two- The Doctor had fixed Jack’s Vortex Manipulator. He decided Jack was on good enough behavior to earn it back, and even if Jack slipped up, levelheaded Ianto would be there to correct him. Jack had looped the Manipulator into the “Agatha Christie” so that her systems could fly through time as well as space.

Three- Jack and Ianto are now taking the Doctor’s recommendation and getting Ianto’s bad hand and leg checked out by the cat nuns of however-many-times-New York. The Doctor had said the cat nuns should be very receptive of Jack, whatever that means. He also explained to them about how he and Rose had once exploited the cat nuns for their illegal and immoral experiments on a new subspecies of humans. Jack had asked why the Doctor was sending them there if they were so corrupt, but the Doctor had said that they had been replaced by new cat nuns and that it had some of the finest medical care.

So here they are, billions of years beyond even Jack’s time, waiting for some Sisters of Plenitude to take a look at this lovely, beautiful hand. Jack kisses it once more with all of the love he has to give.

Ianto looks up this time and Jack smiles at him before leaning in to kiss those beautiful lips too. 

“Wwwhat?” Ianto asks when Jack pulls away.

“Do I need a reason to kiss you?” Jack asks.

Ianto appears to consider this. “N-nno.”

“No,” Jack agrees, then leans in to kiss him again.

When Jack sits back this time, he takes note of the worry hidden in Ianto’s eyes. It is probably in both of their best interests to distract Ianto from his distraction.

“What part are you at?” Jack asks.

“H-hubbard... talking, um. About, er... Ratchett,” Ianto says. “Not... not liking him.”

“Oh,” Jack says. He leans back in his chair, bringing Ianto’s hand to his chest and stroking a fingers gently down the back of it. “I was reading that to you when you came back to me. Remember?”

Ianto shakes his head. “Not... really.”

“Well I was,” Jack tells him. Jack pulls the left hand up to his lips again for one last kiss.

Ianto sighs and pulls off the futuristic headphones so that he can lay his head on Jack’s shoulder. He really is worried, it seems.

“It’ll be okay,” Jack whispers into his hair. “They’re basic rearrangement surgeries, they said. Mortality rate is at .02%. You’ll be fine, I promise.”

“Mr. Jones?” someone asks.

Jack and Ianto sit up straight as a cat nun comes up to them.

“Which of you is Mr. Jones?” she asks pleasantly.

“Mmme,” Ianto says. 

“Wonderful. I’m Novice Ulna,” she says.

“Hi,” Ianto says. 

“We’re ready for you now,” Novice Ulna says. “If the two of you will follow me, please.”

She whisks off, her white robes billowing behind her in the way Jack’s coat does sometimes. Jack and Ianto get up to follow her, but her brisk pace proves to be a bit too much for Ianto.

“Can we slow down?” Jack calls up to her.

She turns back around, and clasps her hands together and smiles at them.

“Of course,” she purrs. Really. She purrs that. 

Ianto and Jack catch up to her and they walk at a slow pace until they get to Ianto’s room. 

“It will take an hour at the most,” Novice Ulna informs them as Jack helps Ianto up onto the bed. “I know it’s long, but it’s only to make sure that all of your nerves, tendons and muscles are fully reconfigured to their fullest potential.”

Jack shares a look with Ianto. One hour? Long? In both Jack and Ianto’s time, this would take forever. This level of reconstruction was not even conceivable back then! 

“Mr. Harkness...”

“Captain,” Ianto says from the bed. 

Novice Ulna looks at him briefly before turning back to Jack.

“Captain Harkness, I’ll have to ask you to leave now, but as with any procedure, you are allowed to say a goodbye, in case of unforeseeable death.”

Ianto pales.

“Though that outcome is very, very low for this procedure,” Nurse Ulna hastens to add. “Less than .02% mortality rate.”

Jack laughs and kisses Ianto’s forehead. 

“See?” Jack says. “Told you. Nothing to worry about.”

He kisses Ianto sweetly on the lips twice.

“Right,” he murmurs softly. “I’ll see you in an hour. Love you.”

“Love... you,” Ianto whispers back. 

Nurse Ulna escorts Jack back to the waiting rooms.

“Is there a gift shop?” Jack asks as he sits down. “If there isn’t, there should be.”

Nurse Ulna gives him a puzzled look, then hands him a device that will alert him when Ianto is brought out of surgery and again when Ianto is ready for visitors. He holds it close to his chest and wishes it was Ianto’s lovely hand instead. One hour, and it will be.

* * *

Ianto Jones is lost. He hates to admit it. He has never gotten lost before, but this cat hospital is confusing. He tried to follow his footsteps back and ended up somewhere entirely new.

His surgery was yesterday, and they “finally” (their words. Ianto still is amazed that it was that quick) let him get up and walk around. Jack was still sleeping on the bed next to him when he decided he was not tired enough to sleep just yet. He had extracted himself from Jack’s clingy octopus arms and taken a stroll. Now he is here and he has no idea how to get back. 

There is a large block letter on the wall that shows him which floor and ward he is in. Pity he cannot read. He walks down the next hall he sees. If he cannot find his way back, best enjoy the pain-free stroll until he finds someone who can take him back to his bed in the recovery ward.

He flexes his left hand. It does not hurt and he takes a moment to marvel at it. He can even touch his little finger to his thumb now. He could not do that before. When he had shown this to Jack, Jack had kissed a trail up from the little finger, over his arms, past his neck and right to his lips. Nice. Very nice. Ianto cannot wait until they get back to the “Agatha Christie” and pick up where that left off.

“Fuck,” Ianto mutters to himself when he steps up to another nearly empty ward. 

He wants to turn around and find a more populated one, somewhere where a nun can take him back to his nice bed and Jack, but at the same time, he does not want that at all. Something is tugging at him, an invisible line, drawing him to the ward. He deliberates on this for a moment before he lets his curiosity win. This detour will not make him any more lost than he already is. In fact, it might make him less so, because a Novice is bound to find him at some point when they come to check in on their patients.

Make that patient, singular. 

Nearly empty had apparently meant nobody but one gigantic head in a jar. Ianto would be concerned, possibly terrified, if he had not learned to be tolerant of other species in these past two years of space travel. 

Ianto is not sure whether he should continue approaching it. He does not want to disturb it, because it seems to be sleeping. It’s eyes are closed, anyway. Yet, he keeps feeling like he needs to see this alien, like it matters very much, so he continues walking towards the tank of smoke and alien until he is standing in front of it.

He startles when the alien opens his eyes.

“Oh,” he says. It is the only thing his brain can think of to say.

“ _Hello_.”

Ianto feels his eyes go wide. That felt like it was in his head. Is this telepathy? Ianto still has not met any telepathic races before. At least not until now, apparently.

“ _You are Ianto Jones_ ,” the voice says in his head.

“Y-yes,” Ianto says. 

He finds himself slightly wary of his speech right now. Normally he is not. No alien seems to care that he cannot talk like other humans can and no human seems to care that he sounds just a bit alien. But in this moment, it bothers him. He does not know why. At least this time he can pass the stutter off for being shocked at the sudden telepathic communication. 

“ _I am the Face of Boe_ ,” says the Face of Boe. 

“Oh,” Ianto says again. Is that supposed to mean something? It feels like it is supposed to mean something. 

“ _I have been hoping to see you_.”

Ianto cannot think of the right word at first. Then he can and he tries to say it, but it takes a few beats to come out.

“Wwwwhy?”

“ _You intrigue me_.”

Ianto blinks. He had not been aware anyone even knew he was there, save for the few nuns who worked on him. Then again the telepathy might have something to do with it.

“Why?” Ianto asks again.

The voice just laughs in his mind. Oh that feels weird. Tingly but if the tingle was more of a reverberation. Rumbly? He cannot place it. 

“ _Come keep me company, Ianto Jones. I am lonely._ ”

He wants to take offense at being directed about by an alien head whose name is a title, but instead he just... wants to. He does not know why, but he still feels drawn to the head. It feels strangely familiar and comforting. So very odd, all of this.

“Why... you lonely?” He immediately cringes.

“ _Do not worry,_ ” the Face of Boe rumbles (definitely rumbles) into his mind, “ _you are not the first I have met who stumbles over words_.”

Stumbles is a graceful way of putting it, and stumble is not a graceful word, so that should say enough about that.

“ _My husband himself preferred telepathic communication,_ ” the Face of Boe’s voice continues. “ _It was far easier for him than speech_.”

“You... husband?”

Ianto looks around the room for another person, or perhaps another large head in a large jar, but nope. The place is still empty except for them.

“ _He is dead, unfortunately_.”

Ianto’s heart immediately goes out to the head, especially when the expression on the Face of Boe’s face looks so utterly broken and sorrowful. No wonder he is lonely. 

“Sssssssorry,” Ianto says. He means it.

“ _Worry not_ ,” the Face of Boe tells him. “ _It has been only a few years, and in another few decades I shall join him again_.”

Oh. Ianto feels even more pity now. Joining his husband in death is out of the question. Suzie had said there is only darkness on the other side. Jack has all but confirmed that. The Face of Boe will never see his husband again, and Ianto feels terrible for that.

The Face of Boe must be able to read his thoughts as well as project them, or something, because he smiles sadly.

“ _The darkness is not the end_ ,” the Face of Boe says. “ _It is only the brink between worlds. I will see my husband again, after I give my last message to the lonely traveler._ ”

Ianto knows nothing about a message or a lonely traveler, but he is curious how the Face of Boe got his information.

“How... you know?” Ianto asks skeptically.

“That is a question you will someday answer for yourself,” the Face of Boe tells him.

And is that not a wonderful way to encourage more conversation, by bringing up Ianto’s mortality.

The Face of Boe laughs his rumbling laugh again. 

“ _It is a long way ahead, Ianto Jones_ ,” the Face of Boe says. “ _Concern yourself not with it yet._ ”

Good to know he does not die in the next year or so. Jack will be pleased about that. But he still does not know what to say. Or how to say whatever he chooses to say.

With a little contemplation, he lands on “Tell me... about husband,” because if the Face of Boe is lonely, he probably would not mind reminiscing about his husband. Sometimes Jack asks Ianto about Lisa and he feels better after talking about her. 

“ _Oh, Ianto Jones, my husband was wonderful_ ,” the Face of Boe says. “ _Absolutely beautiful._ ”

Ianto wonders how beautiful a face in a jar can truly be, but he supposes not all standards are based on the ones he has. He gathers if Jack turned into an old, wrinkly head, he would still love Jack just as much. 

“ _He always thought his words through_ ,” the Face of Boe says. “ _And he was the kindest soul. And he was incredibly smart. I taught him telepathy, even though he did not come from a telepathic ancestry._ ”

Telepathy can be taught? Ianto did not know that. Maybe he can get Jack to teach him. Jack knows a bit about telepathy, with his own low levels of psychic power.

“ _Cute nose_ ,” the Face of Boe adds, seemingly as an afterthought.

Ianto stifles the urge to laugh. “Cute” is not a word he expects to hear from an ancient head-being. And Jack sometimes says that about Ianto’s nose. Ianto hates being called cute, but Jack insists that it is the cutest nose he has ever seen.

“You... love,” Ianto says. “Love him.”

“ _Yes_ ,” the Face of Boe says, and the sigh trembles in Ianto’s mind. 

“Miss him,” Ianto guesses.

“ _I will see him again. Do not doubt that, Ianto Jones_.”

Ianto opens his mouth to say something, but hurried footsteps cut him off. He turns around to see a new cat nun.

“Oh!” she says. 

“ _This is Ianto Jones_ ,” the Face of Boe says. For some reason, the cat nun nearly drops the empty tray in her hands. “ _He is lost._ ”

“Oh!” the nun repeats. She sets the tray down on a table and stares at Ianto for a moment before composing herself. “Why don’t I get you back to where you belong?”

“Thank you,” Ianto says. He is not sure what else to say.

“ _Be well, Ianto Jones_ ,” the Face of Boe says as the nun leads him away. “ _Be loved_.”

He replays those last words over and over in his mind as the nun, Novice Hame, takes him back to his nice bed and Jack. He thinks that was the weirdest way to say a farewell, but he his oddly touched.

* * *

Jack Harkness sighs in relief as Ianto comes into view. The novice he is with takes a long look at him before shaking her head to herself and turning to leave the way she came. Jack does not dwell on it. All he can think about is Ianto. Ianto, who is walking to him, not limping. Jack cannot help himself and he grins like an idiot until Ianto is right in front of him. Jack takes his hand, his beautiful left hand, and kisses it, then draws him in to kiss his lips as well.

“Where’d you go?” Jack asks.

“Lost,” Ianto says with a shrug. 

“I figured,” Jack says. “I’m glad you found someone to help you. I was getting worried. After the Doctor’s stories about how this place was run...”

“Fffound,” Ianto says. “Um... found someone.”

“Did you get her name?” Jack asks, looking over Ianto’s shoulder to where the novice used to be. Maybe he can put in a good word for her.

“Nnno,” Ianto says, shaking his head. “Not... not her.”

“What do you mean?” Jack asks.

“Found... someone, um... else.”

“Oh,” Jack says. “Who?”

“Face... of...” 

Jack waits patiently as Ianto’s face works on the last word. No need to rush him.

“Boe,” Ianto finishes. 

“Oh,” Jack says. “I’ve heard of that guy before. I think Martha talked about him once or twice. Did you know they called me the Face of Boe back in the Time Agency?”

“Yyyes,” Ianto says with an eye roll.

“Well. I suppose I might repeat myself. On occasion.” Jack grins.

“Yes,” Ianto repeats with another eye roll.

“What did you and Mr. Face talk about?” Jack asks.

“Husband,” Ianto says. He sounds sad. “Dead.”

“Oh...” Well no wonder he sounds sad. That is downright depressing. “I’m sorry.”

Ianto shrugs a shoulder to show it does not bother him, but Jack can still see the sorrow in his eyes. 

“We... using, use... um...”

Jack waits again as Ianto roots around his brain for the right word. This time, he cannot seem to find it. Instead, he presses a finger to his skull, then draws a line through the air to Jack’s skull. Oh. Jack grins as he captures the finger against his temple and holds it there.

“ _Telepathy_ ,” he thinks very hard. 

Ianto jumps, yanking his hand back in surprise. His face is aglow with excitement.

“Yes!” Ianto says. “T-teach... teach me!”

“I dunno if I can,” Jack says. “I don’t think you’re wired for telepathy.”

“Face... Face husband... like me! Face... teach him!”

Jack considers it for a moment. Well, it is possible this would make life a lot easier for Ianto. The disconnection between brain and mouth would be eliminated, making it easier for words to come out. He might still get the words wrong or forget the words, but that’s still better than what he has now. 

“We’ll see,” Jack says.

Ianto puts his hands on his hips and frowns.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Jack sputters, “you know I can barely do it myself. We’ll both have to work on it.”

“I know,” Ianto says. 

“Okay. Well. Don’t just stand there,” Jack says. “Back into bed. Novice Ulna thinks your stroll was more than enough exercise for now.”

Ianto sighs but allows Jack to lead him back to the bed. Jack gets in first, then pats the spot beside him. Ianto crawls into bed next to him and Jack throws an arm around him and holds him close. 

Jack’s hand finds Ianto’s lovely left hand and clings to it. It works now. Ianto showed him. It can make a fist and pick up thin leafs of paper and touch the little finger to the thumb. Remarkable. Beautiful. Jack studies it intently. There are a few things to be done with a left hand. Human culture has the tendency to continue the traditions of left hands and marriage. Even now. Jack lifts the hand to his lips and kisses the ring finger. Very, very soon, Jack will find the perfect occasion and he will propose. Not now. Right now they are too excited about Ianto’s smoothly working body. He does not want to spoil this moment with a gesture that will diminish the importance of working hands and legs. 

“Want to sightsee?” Jack asks after a while.

Ianto shrugs. “Sure.”

“It’ll have to be quick. I’m not so sure about this whole ‘Bliss’ drug ordeal. It sounds like a disaster just waiting to happen.”

“Worry.”

“Well yeah, but... I dunno. It just sounds fishy. Let’s just try to get away from it before something bad happens, okay?”

Ianto shrugs again, and Jack plans out a fun sightseeing trip. They can go out to eat the future’s food and taste the future’s wine. They can find bookshops and find all of the best audiobooks. They can wander through the future’s museums and see what the future thinks of their past. Jack can even stop at a jewlers to find the perfect ring.

Jack kisses the ring finger of Ianto’s hand again. For some reason, he has the distinct and wonderful feeling that their happy days will not end for a very, very long time.


End file.
